Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1903-08-08

Oh U1O Uduh " Uu1OW AOOh0 GU O11O
tadpoles and wait till my prisoners
got in a good humor again.
But to return to the subject of
picnic grub went on a picnic a
few weeks ago that was very
charming affair socially, but we
didn't have thing to eat but
bananas. Now bananas are good
thing in their way but-as Moses
said to the children Of Israel
''they don't weigh enough" In
Cuba they put bananas to many
uses-one use being to dry them
and make them into bread. You
can take a banana skin and put an
elegant polish on a tan shoe. You
can also polish the shamrock pave
ment and your anatomy and nearly
everything else in sight by merely
stepping on one with any old kind
of shoe. lola the great French
writer lived a week on a dozen
bananas in his days of poverty and
a young friend Of mine who ran
away from home to make his
fortune in the city lived two days
on half a dozen before his fond
parents discovered his whereabouts
and led him back into the path Of
rectit'lde by the ear. A woman
can drive tenpenny nail into an
oak plank with a banana-though
man couldn't do it in four months
and $50 eternities. AS said before
bananas are a good thing in their
way but let me say right here
gentle reader-and I wouldn't
breathe 1T to a soul on earth but you
when it comes to being in, the
woods nine miles from grocery store
with an appetite like female wolf
with thirteen famished cubs
bananas are darned poor excuse.
There's always some literary
genius along on a summer excur-
sion who wants to read a book.
Sometimes he goes away off and
sits down beneath a tree and reads
to himself while the ant crawls up
his trouser legs and sometimes the
crowd gets an indulgent streak
and asks him to read aloud. This
always tickles his vanity and
makes him take on superior
look and spit out his chewing gum.
The last book / took to a picnic was
a volume of Keats poems. Keats
you know was the son of a stable
man and died at the age of twenty
fve-but he wrote some of the
finest poetry in literature. Some
one suggested that read his
''Endymion" aloud and all the
crowd gathered in circle on the
grass while I stretched my manly
form in the center in one of my
many attitudes of unstudied grace.
I made a very pleasing picture
with one Of my long slender legs
extended along the face of the earth
about nineteen feet and the other
one done up in a neat French twist
and tucked away under me while
my bright sunny hair fell in grace
full taffy-colored abandon down
over my patrician brow and almost
obscured my delicate shell-pink ears
as ] reclined with one elbow in
gopher hole and surveyed my
audience.
Then / began to read in rich,
sonorous voice and was growing
eloquent as the deuce when a
young lady with mellow poetic eyes
and a shirt waist of mashed straw
berry hue inserted one of her
delicate tapering thumbs between
another young lady's riblets with
gentle poke and twittered: ''Oh
look at the lovely spotted COVE"
For a moment red blue and green
spots Heated before my eyes and
felt like poisoning my stepfather's
dog--and then laid the book down
and looked around for the cow.
She was grazing or browsing or
chawing hay or doing something
of the sort On a hillside about
twenty rods away. She had four
legs and a tail and a pair OF horns
and an udder and a notified hide but
I couldn't for the life of me see any
connection between her and Keats
SO I picked up large water elm
club about the size of a ray OF sun
light shining through knot hole
in the fair ground fence and went
over to pay my respects to the COW.
For a moment I felt weary OF
society and all it's hollow mockeries
and yearned with a mad humping
yearn to bat the spots from the