Perth Amboy evening news., 1905-10-12
EVENING SHORT STORY.
SCHOOL BEGINS

OuCDg O0DSA WV NAN
ing man with the tw~o-and-a-half chins
and the houseful of children, Il gather
that all of 'em, the boys included, are
glad that school is about to reopen.
"Well, I'm glad that they are glad.
But, all the same, l can't quite get over
the feeling that it's kind O. queer n
unnatural for children to- want to re.
turn to school after the long vacation
particularly boys.
81 used to begin to get miserable
about the middle of August, thinking
of the inevitable and n~ot-to-be-post-
poned reopening of school early in
September. 1t gave me neurasthenia
of the neck just to think about the
thing. The mere thought of it cast
a dark shadow on the flag end of the
long summer vacation.
Il usually spend most of. the tall
end of the vacation trying to dope out
some scheme whereby might be able
to duck the necessity Of going to
school at all any more. My schemes
were all nebulous and vague. but l
ran over them all in a desperate er-
fort to quit the school business for
good and all.
81 thought, for example, of becoming
a cutlass-eating pirate on the san
culinary Spanish main. There being
no feasible method whereby | could
pull this plan off. l next began to 1g-
ure on the chances of my becoming
a renowned Indian fighter before the
next fail of snow, with the accompany
ing likelihood of my being able to
rescue the beautiful daughter Of a mil
lionaire from the red fiends. of marry
ing her Immediately afterward, and OF
settling down TO a life of ease n
op%ulence on a %5O,OO0-acre ranch. felt
reasonably certain that they wouldn't
have the gall to ask a renowned Indian
fighter to go back to school after the
long summer vacation, even If he were
still of the school age, after he'd done
all of those stunts and caused $4,000
or 20, 900 of the remorseless copper
hued devils to bite the dust.
mo way of getting by with this
plan presented itself, either, and Their
I'd fall to wondering if | couldn't
snag out a job as a brakeman on the
railroad, with the chance to swing a
red lantern in the middle Of the night.
neglected, however, to take the fact
into consideration that l was only
about four feet high at the time, and
that other views as to my career were
entertained at home.
an fact, in order to get out Of the
misery of having to go back to school
with the reopening of the term, | used
to always almost burst a pickering
string in my endeavopsEt0Hfind some
kind Of a job-any old kind of a job
but my efforts in this direction
weren't appreciated at Home.
II was yanked away from several
jobs that I'd landed after herculean
efforts, and forced to retu1h to school.
81 may add, by way Of al aside, that
I've had all the work wanted since
that time, and that, at the present
stage OF it, l can hardly credit the
indubitable and extraordinary fact that
there actually was a period in my life
when l honest and truly ,hankered for
work.
GAS the day for the r%eopening OF
school drew nigh | can recall how
everything seemed to go to the bow
vows.
Even my yaller dog appeared to
have a p%remonition of the coming evil,
and sulked and blinked under the
front porch and refused to be comfort
ed even when | corralled the cat for
him to bark at.
Nothing on the table seemed to
taste worth eating, and the old swim
min hole in the crick, In the cool
depths of which | had surreptitiously
passed most of the daylight hours of
summer, seemed to have a ~reproachful
look on it's skipper-covered surface
for the neglect which would be com
PEELED to show toward it with the re-
opening of the little red school.
"Ahout three days before the hateful
dar mother would ride hard on
mt, ard make me practice getting my
shoes on-of course I'd go barefoot
all during the summer vacation. She
wanted to be dead sure that on the
morning of the school reopening |
wouldn't spring that T-can't-get-my-
shoes-on' gag on her.
my shoes we're always about three
sizes too small for me at the wind
up of the vacation. due to the fact
which the grown folks never by any
chance took into consideration-that
I'd had three months extra growth,
and that the soles of my feet had
been punctured by pieces of broken
bottles, tin cans, splinters. prickly
weeds, snags, sharp rocks and so on.
ever since the first barefoot day.
but | had to get the shoes on.
alice samee, no matter how much too
small they were.
1.-The miserable day would dawn, and
when I'd awaken upon that morning
all of the brisk, whey sunshine Of au-
tumn couldn't wipe the dreariness off
my shirt, nor eradicate the hopeless
[ Az - - faa1fun