The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-05-26

about my name. They'd lived together a good many years and quarreled about everything else under the sun and was running out of subjects. A new sub- ject kind O briskened things up fur awhile
 But finally they went too far with it one time. I was about two years old then, and he was still, calling me Com pany and her calling me Dunne. This time he hits her a lick that lays her out and likes to kill her, and it gets him scared. But she. gets around agin after awhile, and they both see it has went too fur that time, and so they makes up.
 ''Elmira, I give in," says Hank. "His name is Dunne.''
 ''No,'' says she tender like. "You was right, Hank. His name is Com pany." So they pretty near got into another row over that. But they final ly made it up between lem didn't have no last name, and they'd jest call me Danny, which they both done faith full ever after, as agreed.
 Old Hank, he was blacksmith, and he used to lam me considerable, him and has wife not having any kids of their own to lick. He damned me when he was drunk, and he whaled me Wn6u uS WdS SOOSE. never u0lE II LIB agin him much neither, not fur good many years, because he got me used to it young, and hadn't never knowed nothing else. Hanks wife, Elmira, she used to lick him jest about as of ten as he licked her and boss him jest as much. So he fell back on me. A man has jest naturally got to have something to cuss around and boss sos to keep himself from finding out he don't amount to nothing. Leastways most men is like that. And Hank. he didn't amount to much, and he kind O knowed it way down deep in his in- most gizzards, and it were comfort to him to have me around.
 But they was one thing he never sot no store by, and l got along now to where hold that up agin him more'n all the 1ickings he ever done. That was. book learning. He never had none him self, and he was sot agin it, and he never made me get none, and if I'd ever asted him for any he'd of whaled me fur that Hanks wife, Elmira, had 1 married beneath her, and everybody in l our town had come to see it and used l to sympathize with her about it when l Hank wasn't around. She'd tell 'en | yes, it was so. Back in Elmira, N. Y, 1 from where her father and mother | come to our part of n1ineise in the early days, her father had kep' hotel, and they was stylish kind O folks. When she was born her mother | was homesick fur all that style and | fur York state ways, and so she named her EImira.
 But when she married Hank he had I considerable land. His father had left | it to him. but it was all swamp land, | and so Hanks father, he hunted more'n he farmed, and Hank and his brothers done the same when he was a 1 boy. But Hank, he learned a little l blacksmithing when he was growing l up, cause he liked to tinker around and to show how stout he was Then when he married Elmira Appleton he had to go to work practicing that per fession reg'lar, because he never learnt l nothing about farming. He'd sell if teen orr twenty acres every now and then, and they'd be high times till he'd spent it up, and Inebby Elmira would | get some new clothes.
 But when was found on the door | step the land was all gone, and Hank was practicing reglar, when not busy cussing out the fellers that had bought the land. Fur some smart feIlers had come along and bought up all that ! swamp land and dreened it, and now; | it was worth seventy or eighty dollars an acre. Hank, he f1ggered some one had cheated him. Which the Walterses could of dreened theirn, too, only I they'd ruther hunt ducks and have fish 1 frys than to dig ditches. All of which hearn Elnira talking over with the neighbors more'n once when I was growing up. and they all says, 'EHow | iS fn
 mirar' And then she'd kind O spunk up and say, thanks to glory, she'd kep' her pride.s
 Well. they was worse places to live in than that there little town, even if they wasn't no railroad within eight miles and only 300 soles in the hull cooperation. Which Hanks shop and our house set in the edge of the woods just outside the cooperation line, so's the city marshal didn't have no au- thority to arrest him after he cross ed it.
 They was one thing in that house I 1 always admired when I was a kid. And that was a big cistern. Most people has their cisterns outside their house, and they is a tin pipe takes all the rain water off the roof and scoots | it into them Ourn worked the same,
 put our c1Stern was right ln under our
 kitchen floor, and they was trap 1 door with leather hinges opened into it right by the kitchen stove. But
 that wasn't why I was so proud of it.
 It was because that cistern was jest
 plumb full of 6sh-bu1lheads and red
 horse and sunfish and other kinds.
 Hanks father had built that cistern.
 And one time he brung home some
 live fish in a bucket and dumped 'em
 in there. And they growed. And they
 multiplied in there and refurnished the earth So that cistern had got to
 be a fambly custom. which was kep'
 up in that fambiy fora habit. IE was /. a great comfort to Hank fur all them
 WaIterses was great fish eaters, though
 if nexer went to brains We fed.,em