Page:Carl Sandburg - You and Your Job (1910).pdf/9

Rh and gee! I was glad when we quit molasses and got back to butter for the bread. We had a fairly good home, Bill. We got a good deal out of life "when we were a couple of kids."

Many a summer morning we started from home with bread and jelly and cold ham done up in a newspaper, and we walked out over hills and through woods and got acquainted with birds and bees and squirrels and flowers. At noon we would eat our lunch, chewing every mouthful, to get all the taste and flavor and chew we could out of it. Then we'd lay back on the grass and drink in all the joy of being lazy, watching for yellowhammers and redheads, listening to the call of the catbird and the tattoo of the woodpecker. Regular little savages in our own way, we couldn't stay "lazy" very long, so off we'd go for the swimmin' hole. We would dive from the old plank springboard, duck each other, count how long the other fellow could "stay under,' throw mud and splash and frolic. It was a glad young Maytime of life fer us, Bill. We had locts of play. You were the first boy in town that could throw an "out-curve" and a "drop." I could catch flies and bat and run bases with any of them. On rainy days we would go out in the barn and read blood-and-thunder stories about detectives and train-robbers—and we had just enough sense to enjoy them without believing them. Then, later, we learned to like good books, and on long winter evenings we read about the world's great battles and kings and warriors. And do you remember the time when you almost