Middletown transcript., 1914-10-31
MR.. SMITHS BOY

A family named Smith has recently
moved to Germantt wn, and Mr..
Browns boy on Saturday leaned over
the fence and gave our reporter his i'm
pressioas of Mr.. Smiths boy a lad of
about fourteen years of age:
Eyes, me and him are right well ac-
quainted now; he knows more'n / do,
and he's had more experience Bill says
his father used to be a robber, (Smith,
by the way, is a deacon in the Presby-
terian Church, and very excellent
lawyer,) and that he has ten million
dollars in gold buried in the cellar, along
with whole lot of human bOnes-people
he's killed. And he says his father is
a conjurer, and he says that he makes
all the earthquakes that happen every
where in the world. The old man'll
come home at night after there's been
an earthquake, all covered with sweat,
and so tired he kin hardly stand. Bill
says it's such hard work.
And Bill told me that once, when "a
man around here was trying to sell
lightning rods, bis father got mad and
ct him right up, and he takes bites out
of everybody he comes acrost. That's
what Bill tells me. That's all l know
about it.
''And he tole me that once he used
to have dog one of those little kind
of dogs, and he was flying his kite, and
just for fun he tied the kite string onto
the dogs tail. And then the wind
struck her and his dog went boomin'
down the street, with his hind legs in
the air for about a mile, when the kite
all of a sudden began to go up, and in
about a minute the dog was fifteen
miles high, and commanding view of
California, and Egypt, and Oshkosh, l
think Bill said. He came down, any
how, I know, in Brazil, and Bill says
he swum home all the way in the At
lantic ocean, and when he landed his
legs was all nlDbled off by sharks.
81 wish father'd buy me dog, SOS l
could send him up that way. But /
never have no luck. Bill says that where
they used to live he went out on the
roof one day to fly his kite, and he sat
down on the top of the chimbly to give
her plenty of room and, while he was
sitting there thinking about nothing.
the old man put a keg of powder down
below in the fireplace to clean the SCOT
out of the chimbIy. And when he
touched it off Bill was blowed over
ag'in the Baptist Church steeple, and
he landed on the weathercock with his
pants torn, and they couldn't get him
down for three days. So he hung there
going round and round with the wind,
and he lived by eating the crows that
came and sat on him, because they
thought he was made of sheet iron and
put up there on purpose.
''He's had more fun than enough.
He was telling me the other day about
a sausage-stuffer his brother invented.
1t was kinder machine that worked
with treadle, and Bill says the way
they did in the fall was to fix it on the
hogs back, and connect the treadle
with string, and the hog would work
the treadle and keep on running it up
and down until the machine cut the hog
all up fine and showed the meat into
skins. Bill says his brother called it
Every Hog His Own Suffer, and it
\ worked splendid. But l do know
Pears to mes if there couldn't be no
machine like that. But any way Bill
said so.
"And he told me about an uncle of
his out in Australia, who was ct by a
big oyster, once, and when he got inside
he stayed there until he'd ct the oyster.
Then he split the shells open and took
half one for a boat, azd he sailed
along until he met a sea serpent, and he
killed it and drawed off his skin, and
when he got home he sold it to an engine
company for hose, for forty thousand
dollars. Bill said that was actually so,
because he could show Inc a man who
used to belong to the engine company.
wish father let me go out and find
sea serpent like that, but he don't let
me have no chance to distinguish my
self.
bill was saying, only yesterday,
that the Indians caught him once and
drove eleven railroad spikes through
his stomach, and cut off his scalp, and
never hurt him a bit He said he got
away by the daughter of the chief
sneaking him out of the wigwam and
lending him horse. Bill says she was
in love with him and l asked him to let
me see the holes where they drove in
them spikes he said he darsent take off
his clothes or he'd bleed to death. He
says his own father don't know it, be-
cause Bill's afraid it might worry the
old man.
"And Bill told me they wasn't going
to get him to go to Sunday school. He