Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/296

 Though I wuz sorry for Jack and pitiful towards him, as pitiful could be, I tried to be and wuz about half the time, I should say, sorry for Tamer, or mebby it wuz a quarter of the time I wuz sorry for her, or half a quarter, I can't tell exactly, because I would have my ups and downs about it, for Jack it wuz a full, deep, complete pity and sympathy and sorrow all the time. But sometimes I would say to myself, now Tamer has got a bad temper, she got it through Heaven only knows by what cause, ancestral or local. If it come down to her with her Roman nose and thin lips from some ancestor, then how fur is she to blame for not subduin' it entirely? No amount of rubbin' down and smoothin' and grindin' could make that nose of hers into a Greecy one. No amount of stimulatin' liniment could make them thin lips soften out into more generous and sweeter curves. She might git up early and set up late and she couldn't make them changes, and who knows whether she could with all her efforts entirely soften and make sweet that sour, dissatisfied disposition and fiery temper?

And then would be the time, for four or five minutes mebby, I would be sorry for Tamer. And then agin I would say to myself she has lived in a onreal, onnatural world and is livin' there still. And when pirates and burglars and murderers and arsoners and rapiners and robbers and Injuns are continually roamin' and stalkin' and war-whoopin' and murderin' and dashin' and skulkin' and prancin' through anybody's brain, hain't it reasonable that that brain should be tuckered out, too tuckered, too trompled and beat down to take fresh, vigorous thought on any subject?

I would say in such a wild, trompled, dust-blown, whoopin' highway what chance is there for such a little