Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/139

 sandy sile or gravelly, or swampy, or anything? I prize it for its own beauty and sweetness that it has drawn by its own life out of the earth. Good land! I should jest as soon take up a handful of this sile and treasure it up and try to see how it come to nourish so sweet a life as I would to grope back amongst the dust of them old Poltroons. Though to be sure it is nateral that a posy should strike some clingin' roots down into the sile it grew on, it is nater and can't be helped. You take any posey that is healthy and vigorous, and take any tree or bush whatsumever, and when you pull it out of its home it takes a wrench, a hard wrench to start it, the tendrils strike so deep. God made posies and hearts kinder clingin' in their nater and they hang onto their old homes. It is nateral for folks to look back with pride upon the noble doin's of their fore-*fathers if they've done 'em, but to boast over a Poltroon jest from the fact of his bein' a Poltroon—I should never boast over it, never."

"Patroon," sez Tamer hautily, "I have corrected you before in this."

"Well," sez I mildly, "they sound considerable alike, and when there are so many big words that mean about the same thing it is nateral that folks should sometimes git 'em kinder mixed."

"They wuz high families," sez Tamer, "they descended from the Dutch settlers on Manhattan Island, that the grandest families of to-day claim with pride as being their ancestors."

"Oh," sez I, "you mean them old market gardeners, them old cabbage raisers, fur hunters, and pumpkin farmers. Why, how you talk," sez I, "I think more of Von Crank than I did. I had no idee his ancestors wuz