Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/297

 mite of a lonesome wayfarer as Jack, and I don't know that it is any wonder that he is sometimes entirely overlooked, and sometimes ridin' up in high ease, and sometimes stomped and trompled on. Poor little creeter! And then I would think of her different diseases, and wantin' to do my best for her even in my thoughts (for, though I gin her advice through duty, I always tried to be charitable to her in my mind), I would say over to myself some of her most lengthy distempers and curious ones, I would say, in a low, deep voice, "basler mangetus, sinevetus, singletus, tonsiletus, pironitus," etc., etc., till sometimes I would git real sorry for her as much as six minutes. Well, just such seens as I have mentioned I would witness from hour to hour and from day to day, and finally I got heartsick with lookin' at it and wuz glad when the time drawed near for me to return to the bosom of my family (a gingham bosom week days, and a fine linen one Sundays, with five pleats on a side). Jack cried when I spoke of goin' home, but Cicero didn't care at all, he wuz to school daytimes, and the very minute he got home at night he wuz pourin' over them novels, and his mother would proudly say to me:

"Cicero is so much like me, so different from Jack, he is so studious, such a reader, he will make a great thinker."

Not through the nourishment he gits from such food, I sez to myself. And I tried several times to talk with Cicero about readin' such books, but he would look up so coldy at me from across "The Boody Gulch" or "The Fiend Haunted Hollow" that it fairly stunted me. He would look up middlin' respectful to hear my remonstrances about readin' 'em, would listen with his finger between the pages, and the minute I stopped, resoom his