Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1911-01-18
Continued from last week. q


while we were at Hyde Farm, and
may say that my experience during
those days was not unlike that of the
boys and girls who live on farms in
the United States and attend school
in adjoining towns or in country
places.
The school which / attended was
& private institution kept by Mr..
Russell, who had for helper a
young man named William Tread
way; we boys always called him
Billy freddy, not because we had
anything against him but because,
we'll, we were boys and it came
handy.
In the morning, after an early
breakfast, l was gotten ready for
school either by my mother or my
half-sister, Mary Ann Leedham, and
I want to say right here that no boy
ever had a better sister than she has
been to me; from my earliest recol-
lection she always had me under her
care and would stoutly defend me
against all my enemies, no matter
whether / was in the right or wrong
of it; that made no difference to her,
she never stopped to make fine dis
tinctions. / remember, on one oc-
casion, when / was very little fell
low, long before l had been made
happy with my first pair of pants.
that a little girl who was consider
ably older than / and who was SO
brimming full of mischief that it had
to have an outlet in some manner,
seemed to find great satisfaction in
making me the object of her mirth-
full capers, and sometimes, / fear,
the victim of her angry resentment.
Be that as 1t may, ! was easily fright
ened by her threatening words or
looks, being good deal Of coward,
but at the same time quite easily
stirred up by any real or fancied in
suit which I would resent in the only
way which seemed open to me, that
is, by angry tears. My tormentor,
who perfectly understood my fail
ings, played upon them with intense
delight; she made faces at me, she
frightened me with ghost stories and
threatened me with all sorts of
direful things. But one day my
sister caught her teasing me in an
unmerciful manner which aroused
her indignation to the boiling point
and catching the girl after long
chase, she settled accounts with her
for all time to come, to my great
tisfaction; but in doing so sadly
unsettled, for the time being, at
least, the friendly relations which
Lad hitherto existed between the
two families.
/ carried my dinner in a little
basket as did three or four Others
who lived far enough away from the
school to make 1t necessary for them
to take their dinner with them.
Among the many good things which
usually made my dinner was a fair
sized piece of rhubarb pie; now
never cared for pie plant in any way
and until recently l have hardly
ever touched it since my Beaconsfield
school days. ] never said much about
1t at home because l was always
looking for a chance to trade it of
at school for something more to my
liking, so that hunk of rhubarb pie
seldom failed to show up at the bot
tom of my dinner basket.
There was one thing, however
which made the matter a little hard
er for me. One of the boys, who
like myself, carried his dinner to
school, always finished up with a
huge piece of mince pie which never
failed to make my mouth water; the
kid himself was almost an exact
counterpart of Dickens fat boy, SC
graphically pictured by the. great
author In Pickwfck Papers. My!