The Waterbury Democrat., 1933-02-20
S5PY0UR CHILDREN
By Olive Roberts Bsrton
0Ie55 61 Nfi1 sfRYIce. lNc

Johnny shove Out" let us call him. His name was Brown, Du. that merely entitled him to eat and sleep in his home and gel washed in the bathroom and be taken to the store and fitted out with clothes and given movie money once in while.
 oh, yes, he had lots of things of his own. almost too much, put when you walked into the from door and up the tidy stairway to the delicate bed rooms above you would never have suspected there was a boy about.
 He had wagon, a bicycle skates, sled. punching bag, car penter chest, a football, new kite, and books. Besides he had other things far more important stones and sticks, glass and string odd pots of paint and an assort- 1 ment of glue-becaue Johnny's I imagination ran to construction not with cut and dried erectol sets. which were much tidier. but setting up lighthouses or wigwams | or gasoline stations out of what ever material he could salvage One day he came in with 8 cigai box of mortar he swiped out oi a new building. He had to hide | that in the cellar and the nex l day when he went to get it, found 1 it had set. That was blow. Not a Sign of Boy. | To go back to the first floor O. Johnny's house, it was all just so rugs, furniture, lamps, hardwood and everything. So was the res of the house including his room. You would have known hi! mother lived there of course, aLst | his father, for there were good
 looking smoking tables about ant | his fathers favorite magazines 1T a nice symmetrical row. Ever | friends had their share of the fur nishings. That fine fooled bos contained bridge cards, and the hand-painted table in the corner tipped up to play on. Johnny wasn't interested in any of these things. He wasn't inter. ested either in his new eighteenth l century furnishings, or the Bull garian linen spread, or the rought texture of his red and blue over- drapes. The matching chair-cov- CTS he would much have preferred to be made of potato sacking, such a row ensued if he muased them. One day he asked two boys up and the week that followed wasn't worth it.
 Where were his bicycle, ct cet- era?
 Well. they were brought in the back way and kept in the laun- dry. So were most of the outdoor paraphernalia and the punching bag.
 Preferred the Street.
 His football was kept on the top shelf of the hall closet and he had to call some one to get it If he wanted it down. His books were in neat row in the lower bureau drawer of his room. His skates were cached on the shelt at the turn of the back stairs His carpenter-chest was in the eel lar under window but the celIai with it's new-fangled insulated furnace was cold. His tubes and bottles and "truck" were high on the top shelf of his closet-push- | ed back out of sight.
 | tommy uldn IuSS mucn. He had grown up with the idea that I everything g. boy owned was {
 nuisance. He felt apologetic, /;
 little ashamed that the only thing
 he cared for seemed to make ;
 clutter. This feeling he transfer
 red to himself later on.
 He kept out of sight or out o
 the house as much as he could l Col l..
 street or at a movie. | Too bad he couldn't have hat one room for his kingdom. room
 with a good bed and not so man, | fxings. A few shelves to hold tho | junk and the books--a room where he could have the fellows in, and | where at least he counted as q person, not merely as q troublesome ] extra