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Ebook has 686 lines and 36926 words, and 14 pages

TAKE IT FROM DAD

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK ? BOSTON ? CHICAGO ? DALLAS ATLANTA ? SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

LONDON ? BOMBAY ? CALCUTTA MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO

TAKE IT FROM DAD

BY GEORGE G. LIVERMORE

Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1920.

TAKE IT FROM DAD

LYNN, MASS.

DEAR TED:

Your letter asking me if I think you are a failure at school, and wanting to know whether I can give you a job in the factory, came this morning.

"Yes," to the first, and, "I can but I won't" to the second. I didn't send you to Exeter to have you leave in a week; and as for the factory, I guess it can stagger along a couple of years more without you, although I sure do appreciate your wanting to work. It's so different from anything else you have ever wanted, and as Lew Dockstader once said, "Variety is the spice of vaudeville."

Sure, Exeter is a rotten place in the fall, when it rains eight days a week, and there's nothing except soggy leaves and mud everywhere, and a continuously weeping sky that's about as cheerful as the Germans at the peace table. You don't know any one well enough yet to say three words to, and your teachers seem to be playing a continual run of luck, by always calling on you for the part of the lesson you haven't learned.

Sure it's rotten; not Exeter, but what's the matter with you. It begins with an "h" and ends with a "k," but like other diseases, lockjaw excepted, and you'll never have that anyway, it's just as well to catch it young and get it over with.

Then, too, I guess you're beginning to realize that the leader of the Lynn High School Glee Club and left end of the football team isn't so big a frog, after all, when he gets into a puddle with five hundred other boys, most of whom never heard of Lynn.

Your learning this young is a blessing which you don't appreciate now. I had to wait until I took that trip to Binghamton with the Masons. I'd thought till then I was some pumpkins of a shoemaker grinding out eight thousand pairs a day, eleven with two shifts, but when I moseyed through Welt & Toplift's and saw them make fifty thousand pairs without batting an eye, I realized I had been looking at myself through the wrong end of the telescope.

Say, Ted, did I ever tell you about the time your grandfather and grandmother went to the Philadelphia Exposition and left me at Uncle Nate's?

You never saw Uncle Nate; but I don't know as you need feel peeved about it. Anyway, Uncle Nate had whiskers like a Bolshevik, and catarrh. He was a powerful conscientious man, except in a horse dicker, when he shed his religion like a snake does his skin.

Uncle Nate lived over at Epping Four Corners, six miles from our farm, and owing to his judgment of horse flesh he was about as popular there as General Pershing would be at a Red meeting.

I landed at Uncle Nate's at noon, and by six o'clock he had asked me four times if I was a good boy, and I could tell by the look in his eye that he'd ask me that a dozen times more before I went to bed.

Along about seven it began to grow dark and I began to miss my mother. Uncle Nate sat in a rocking chair in the dining room with his feet on the stove, chewing fine cut and reading a farm journal, and I sat in a small chair with my feet on the floor, reading the "Pruno Almanac" and chewing my fingers.

He said nothing, and I said the same. After a while I got so blame lonesome I stole out on the back steps and stood there wishing I was dead or in jail, or something equally pleasant.

Gosh all hemlock! I was homesick. Then I remembered Sandy, our hired man, was still at the farm. I pointed my nose toward home and skedaddled and, believe me, I went some until I hit the woods just below the intervale, where the wind was soughing through those tall pines like invisible fingers plucking on Old Nick's harp. It sure was the lonesomest place I had ever been in; but the thought of Uncle Nate drove me on until I came to where the old Shaker graveyard runs down close to the road.

I'd forgotten the graveyard until just as I got up to it a white, shapeless figure jumped into the road and ran toward me, waving its arms.

Old Von Kluck did a turning movement before Paris; but he had nothing on me. I turned and, believe me, son, I went back to Uncle Nate's so fast I almost met myself coming away. I slid into the house like a dog that's just come from killing sheep and found the old gentleman asleep in his chair.

When he awoke he said I'd been a good boy not to disturb his nap, and he gave me a nickel, which surprised me so I almost refused it.

After that we were great pals, and I actually hated to leave him when the folks got home.

Cheer up, Ted, you'll like the school better before long, and try learning all your lessons instead of only part; you can fool a lot of teachers that way.

One thing more, don't write any doleful letters to your Ma just now. I'm planning a surprise trip with her to the White Mountains for our twenty-first wedding anniversary, and if you go butting in on her good time I'll tan you good. No, I won't, I'll stop your allowance for a month. That'll hurt worse.

Your affectionate father,

WILLIAM SOULE.

P. S.--I forgot to tell you the ghost I met by the graveyard was a half-wit who had escaped from Danvers in his nightshirt. They caught him the next morning, in a tree on the common, where he sat singing songs, thinking he was a canary.

DEAR TED:

So your roommate is a ham, is he? Well, if he is, you're in luck. Ham is selling for fifty cents a pound in Lynn and is going up.

Time was when ham was looked down upon as the poor man's meat, but now, when there are no poor except professional men and shoe manufacturers, his pigship has come into his own.

Seriously, Ted, I didn't care much for your last letter, it left a taste in my mouth like castor oil. I've got a pretty good idea of the appearance and general make-up of that "ham" of yours, and I'm laying myself a little bit of a lunch at the Touraine next time I'm in Boston, against reading one of your Ma's new books on the Ethical Beliefs of the Brahmins I'm right.

Comes from a small town in Kansas. Never been fifty miles away from home before, and would have taken the next train back after the frigid reception you gave him if he had had the price, and the old folks out there weren't betting on him to make good. Wears half-mast pants, draped with fringe at the bottom, and the sleeves of his coat seem to be racing each other to his elbows, and for general awkwardness he'd make a St. Bernard puppy look as graceful as Irene Castle.

You're at an age now, Ted, when you know so much more than you ever will again, it would be presumptuous for me to offer any advice.

Advice is the most beautiful exponent known of the law of supply and demand. No one wants it, that's why so much of it is always being passed around free. A man will give you a dollar's worth of advice when he'd let you starve for a nickel. But while I think of it, I want to tell you of something that happened at the Academy the year your Uncle Ted was there. That fall there blew into school a rawboned youth from the depths of Aroostook, Maine. He tucked his jean trousers in high cowhide boots, wore red flannel underwear, and spent most of his time stumbling over some one else's feet when he couldn't trip over his own. The school was full, and the only vacant place was the other half of Ted's room, so the faculty planted him there. Ted made him about as welcome as a wood pussy at a lawn party, for at the time he was badly bitten by the society bug and thought a backwoodsman roommate would queer him with the club he wanted to make. For a week Ted was as nasty to his new roomie as possible, hoping he'd get sick of his company and seek other quarters. Apparently Aroostook never noticed a thing. Just went on in his awkward way, and the nastier Ted got, the more quiet he became.

On the night of the president's reception Ted hurried back to his room to dress, filled with pride and prunes. Pride because of a brand-new dress suit he had bought with an unexpected check dad had absent-mindedly sent him, and prunes because supper at the place he boarded consisted mostly of that rare fruit. When Ted opened the door his roommate was greasing his cowhide boots, and wearing an air of general expectancy.

Ted brushed by him into the bedroom, and changed into his dress suit, his mind delightfully full of his lovely raiment and the queen of the town belles he had persuaded to accompany him.

At last, hair slicked and clothes immaculate, he rushed out into the study where his roomie stood, evidently waiting for him.

"Guess I'll walk along with you, Ted, if you don't mind?" Aroostook said. "I cal'late this reception thing is a right smart way to get to know folks."

"In those clothes?" Ted asked with biting sarcasm, delightfully oblivious of the fact that he was wearing evening clothes for the first time. Ted says he hates to remember the look that came into his roommate's eyes at his remark. The sort of a look a friendly pup has when he wags himself to your feet only to receive a kick instead of the expected pat.

His roommate did not reply, and furious at himself for having spoken as he did, and also afraid of the guying he might have to stand for his roommate's appearance, Ted walked silently down the stairs beside him. At the door he shot another venomous arrow by hurrying off in an opposite direction, exclaiming, "Well, you can't go with me anyhow! I'd stay home if I were you. I don't think you'll enjoy yourself."

Basking under the smiles of his fair lady, Ted walked by her side to the reception, pouring into her ears the story of his ridiculous roommate, and she, as heartless a young miss as ever lived, made Ted promise to introduce her so she and her friends might enjoy him at close quarters.

After a few dances Ted spied his victim leaning awkwardly against a pillar in the gym, and looking about as much at ease as a boy who's been eating green apples.

Ted introduced his partner, and in five minutes his roommate was surrounded by a bevy of town beauties. Boys are cruel as young savages, but for sheer, downright, wanton cruelty give me the thoughtless girl of seventeen. That precious crew let him try to dance with them, mocked and guyed him when he stumbled over their feet or stepped on their dresses, and poked so much fun at him that at last he left the hall, his face flaming, and his eyes wet with tears of mortification.

Little beast that Ted was, he took upon himself great credit for his humiliation and acted like a perfect cad for the rest of the evening, starting delighted giggles whenever possible by brilliant remarks about his backwoodsman.

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