The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1919-06-26

river which bounded the farm or
the west side to battle. We would
streak it down through the dewey
meadows and have a glorious I'M
wash We could all swim like
ducks-swim on belly, on back, on
side, on top of water, like muskrats
and looms, and we'd dive and frolic
and scoot water with the palm at
each other in an abandoned way
sure to sink the iron into the sou!
of puritan as much as three and
a half, if he could have seen us from
the slate bluff above. Prolonged as
the domestic wash was the river
bath was much more extended, and
we fear it was a very depraved and
unregenerate thing-a high old
swim, rather than bath.
3. Then came the Sunday school.
And of all the poky things in this
world, a Sunday school in a country
schoolhouse twenty-five or thirty
five years ago, was easily the chief.
Ii our county missionary is organ
he ought to be prosecuted for doing
violence to human nautre. Not a
bit of singing, not picture paper,
not a bouquet, not a single girl
teacher good to look at. The teach
ers were either sleepy old deacons
or dried-up gothic old maids good
for nothing else. The school open
ed with prayer by deacon. We
can repeat and bound and pause
typed and as dry as punches of
pennyroyal hung up to the rafters.
They told the Lord about the heath
en-, ''the young and rising genera
ton and all that sort of thing. If
the Lord has as good a memory as
we have. he, too, must remember
them. We were asked question
and were apt to drawl out, Il don
know For we hadn't studied that
thing. was such colossal bore. We
had but two teachers all the time
spent in purgatory. One, J. A.,
had deep bass voice, and hair as
curly as wool on merino lamb.
Oh, we adored his hair. If our hair
would only curl like his! 1t was
cut at home. His wife put milk
crock on his head and sheared
around the rim in the neck. The
other teacher was a deacon. He was
good man, but as tedious as
ennui. He has been in heaven a
dozen years, we guess, and if he had
the faculty he must pick golden
harp very skillfully by this time.
He was always pressing by Paul, and
we boys dubbed him "Paul's sisters
SON." And by that name he has gone
ever since. We wonder, as we think
of those dreary poky old times, that
the boys did not commit suicide or
get rid of their everlasting bores.
Nothing but the irrepressible gaiety
and hope of childhood and youth
could nave supported them.
4. Pulling 'pusley of course,
that is purslane, but not even threat
of capital punishment could keep
one from calling it ''pusley.' You
know the fat unuctous weed. 1t
spreads out over the ground, and its
shallow roots run laterally and ray
out quite as broadly at the top.
Just the color of toper's face, of
the breezy, Oily-looking face of the
brunette who had eaten too much
dinner. The most persistent weed,
as persistent as sin, or bourbonism
in rock-rooted democrat. You
may pull the COMPOUNDED thing up
forty times in one season, and an
other takes its place. Pen hogs
like it as well as girls like caramels
and chocolates: The swollen tender
pine bough Of pitch and resin. Nvell
when there wasn't anything else to
do we were set to pulling pusley.
Pull q ton or two before breakfast
or dinner, and take 1t in a bushel
basket or fork to the pen. In our
boyhood We pulled enough pusley to
MI the hold in the Great Eeastern.
and We haven't doubt that old