The Mitchell capital. (Mitchell, Dakota [S.D.]) 1879-1918, 1903-05-15

I never see one of these fellows swelling
around with their petty larceny pride that
I don't Think of a little experience of
mine when / was a boy. An old fellow
caught ms lifting a watermelon in his
patch, one afternoon, and instead of cuff
eng me and letting me go, as l had ex-
pected If / got caught, he led me home
by the ear to my ma, and told her what
1 had been IN to-.
Your grandma had been raised on the
oid-fashioned plan, and she had never
heard of these new-fangled theories of
reasoning Will child till it's 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 a trunk strap or a slipper. Your
grandma was a pretty substantial woman.
Nothing of the tootsey-wootsey about her
foot, and nothing of the airy-fairy triie
about her slipper. When she. was through
I 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 I could recite the Ten
Commandments and the Sunday school
lesson by heart.
There was a whole chaper Of It, and an
Old Testament chapter at that, but I
laid right into it because I knew ma, and
supper was only two hours off. T can
repeat that chapter still, Onward and
backward. without missing a word or
stopping to catch 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, I was glad to see him happen
In, and I 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, I 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; n 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 /,
again. Patted me on the head and said
l was "an honor to my parents and an ex.
ample to my p~laymates."
I had been looking down all the time
telling mighty proud and scared. but al
that I couldn't help glancing up to see thu
otner boys admire me. But the first per.
son my eye lit on was your erandma
standing in the back Of the room. where
she had stopped for a moment on her wa,
up to church, and glaring at me in !.
mighty unpleasant way.
Tell EN-, John" she said right out loud
before everybody.
There was no way to run, for the eide.
had hold Of my hand, and there was n,
place to hide, though I reckon I coult
have crawled into a rat hole. So to gail
time, I blurted out:
Tell EN- what, mann"
Tell 'em how you come to have you
lesson SO nice"
I learned to hate notoriety right the,
and there, but l knew there was n
switching her off on to the weather whel
she wanted to talk religion. So I shut m,
eyes q let it come. though it caught o.
my palate once or twice on the way out.
Hooked a watermelon, man,"
There wasn't any need for further par
ticulars with that crowd, and they sim
ply howled. Ma led me up to our pew
allowing hat she'd tend to me Monda,
for ~disgracing her in public that waj-an
she did.
That was a twelve-grain dose, withou
any coat, but it sweat more can
and false pride out of my system than
could get back into 1t for the next twent
years. I learned right there how to b
humble, which is a heap more importar
than knowing how to be proud. There ar
mighty few men hat need any lessons !
nat -. sli4AllA2lla