Take It from Dad

by George Griswold Livermore

One evening last fall, on the way home from Ogunquit, the car broke down in Portsmouth, and while it was being repaired, I took in one of the movies. The show was quite good and I enjoyed it, until I came out when it was over, and found a crowd of Exeter boys hanging around the entrance speaking to any good looking young girl who was alone.

Then there was a general pairing off, and strolling up and down the main streets, looking in the shop windows, and much loud talking, giggling, and laughter, while the young townies stood on the corners making cheap remarks. Some of your schoolmates took their lady friends into the little lunch rooms with which Portsmouth is so plentifully supplied, and bought them suppers of ham and eggs, and ice cream, while a few with more money went to the Rockingham.

I moseyed around the town quite a bit watching these schoolmates of yours, and was thoroughly disgusted. Not that I saw anything really wrong. I didn't. Every one of the boys had taken the cars for Exeter by eleven, but there was such a general kissing and dumbfoolishness I'd like to have spanked the lot.

Perhaps it's heaps of satisfaction to a young fellow, one of the big men of the school, to hike for Portsmouth with a few dollars of his dad's burning holes in his pocket, cut the prettiest shop or factory girl out of a crowd, and carry her off for supper, spending his week's allowance in one evening, but I can't see it.

Now don't think I'm down on factory girls. I'm not. I've employed heaps of them, and with mighty few exceptions they've been respectable hard-working girls, who could hold their head up anywhere, and although as a rule they would scratch a fellow's eyes out who tried to get fresh with them, they don't mind paying for what they consider a good time with a few kisses.

Now I'm not a snob, and if I ever see any signs of your becoming one, I'll whale it out of you in jig time, for I hate a too-proud-to-speak individual, as much as I hate a crooked leather salesman. But I'd rather you spent your evenings in Exeter, on the piazza of those Eaton girls to whom you introduced me, than parading the streets of Portsmouth with a factory girl hanging on your arm.

I remember my first lesson in chivalry, and before the super. comes in to tell me there's an embargo on freight out of Lynn, I'll pass it along.

I was in the grammar school, and about ten years old. One day at recess, a little girl named Sally Perkins had a bag of peppermint candy and was treating the other girls, when Butcher Burch, a great hulking boy of twelve, snatched the bag out of Sal's hand and began to gobble it as fast as he could.

I was furious, for little Sally was a nice pleasant girl who never stuck her tongue out at me, and I should like to have whaled the Butcher, but he had soundly thrashed me on several occasions, and I knew he would repeat if I made any protest.