THE PARADISE OF THE BAREFOOTED BOY.
I would rather be a barefooted boy with cheeks of tan and heart of joy than to be a millionaire and president of a National bank. The financial panic that falls like a thunderbolt, wrecks the bank, crushes the banker, and swamps thousands in an hour. But the bank which holds the treasures of the barefooted boy never breaks. With his satchel and his books he hies away to school in the morning, but his truant feet carry him the other way, to the mill pond "a-fishin'." And there he sits the livelong day under the shade of the tree, with sapling pole and pin hook, and fishes, and fishes, and fishes, and waits for a nibble of the drowsy sucker that sleeps on his oozy bed, oblivious of the baitless hook from which he has long since stolen the worm. There he sits, and fishes,
and fishes, and fishes, and like Micawber, waits for something to "turn-up." But nothing turns up until the shadows of evening fall and warn the truant home, where he is welcomed with a dogwood sprout. Then "sump'n" does turn up. He obeys the call of the Sunday school bell, and goes with solemn face, but e'er the "sweet bye and bye" has died away on the summer air, he is in the wood shed playing Sullivan and Corbett with some plucky comrade, with the inevitable casualties of one closed eye, one crippled nose, one pair of torn breeches and one bloody toe. He takes a back seat at church, and in the midst of the sermon steals away and hides in the barn to smoke cigarettes and read the story of "One-eyed Pete, the Hero of the wild and woolly West." There is eternal war between the barefooted boy and the whole civilized world. He shoots the cook with a blow-gun; he cuts the strings of the hammock and lets his dozing grandmother fall to the ground; he loads his grandfather's pipe with powder; he instigates a fight between the cat and dog during family prayers, and explodes with laughter when pussy seeks refuge on the old man's back. He hides in the alley and turns the hose on uncle Ephraim's standing collar as he passes on his way to church, he cracks chestnut burrs with his naked heel; he robs birds' nests, and murders bullfrogs, and plays "knucks" and "base-ball." He puts asafetida in the soup, and conceals lizzards in his father's hat. He overwhelms the family circle with his magnificent literary attainments when he reads from the Bible in what he calls the "pasalms of David"—"praise ye the Lord with the pizeltry and the harp."
THE PARADISE OF THE BAREFOOTED BOY.