 Section 1 of Chimes from a Jester's Bells by Robert J. Burdette. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Deborah Lynn. Chimes from a Jester's Bells by Robert J. Burdette. To my best friend, gentlest critic, trustiest comrade, Robert, the son of his mother. And further, by these, my son, be admonished, of making many books there is no end, and much study as a weariness of the flesh. To my ink stand, peary in spring, drowned in thy shallow deeps, lie pearls of thoughts the world hath never known, most of them other men's, but some mine own. The worst ones, over which the sad muse weeps and thrusts back to thy darkest donjon keeps, sinking them down with save old bubbling moan to drown in midnight horror all alone, whilst a saved world unconscious round thee sleeps. In vain I stain my nose and ink my thumb, and to the ceiling desert lift mine eyes, hoping from lime wash sublime thoughts to drink. My shallow murmurs make the deep more dumb, jet black beneath my vexing pen it lies. I have it now, great snakes, there goes the ink. Section one, the story of Rallo Alpha. Night, silence, a struggle for the light, and he did not know what light was, an effort to cry, and he did not know that he had a voice. He opened his eyes, and there was light. He had never used his eyes before, but he could see with them. He parted his lips, and hailed this world with a cry for help. A tiny craft, in sight of new shores, he wanted his latitude and longitude. He could not tell from what port he had cleared. He did not know where he was. He had no reckoning, no chart, no pilot. He did not know the language of the inhabitants of the planet upon which Providence had cast him. So he saluted them in the one universal speech of God's creatures, a cry. Everybody, every one of God's children, understands that. Nobody knew whence he came. Someone said he came from heaven. They did not even know the name of the little life that came throbbing out of the darkness into the light. They had only said, if it should be a boy, and if it should be a girl, they did not know. And the baby himself knew as little about it as did the learned people gathered to welcome him. He heard them speak. He had never used his ears until now, but he could hear with them. A good, lusty cry, someone said. He did not understand the words, but he kept on crying. Possibly he had never entertained any conception of the world into whose citizenship he was now received, but evidently he did not like it. The noises of it were harsh to his sensitive nerves. There was a man's voice, the doctors, strong and reassuring. There was a woman's voice, soothing and comforting, the voice of the nurse. And one was a mother's voice. There is none other like it. It was the first music he heard in this world, and the sweetest. By and by somebody laughed softly and said in coaxing tones, there, there, there, give him his dinner. His face was laid close against the fount of life, warm and white and tender. Nobody told him what to do. Nobody taught him. He knew. Placed suddenly on the guest list of this changing old caravansary, he knew his way at once to two places in it, his bedroom and the dining room. Wherever he came from, he must have made a long journey, for he was tired and hungry when he reached here. Wanted something to eat right away. When he got it, he went to sleep. Slept a great deal. When he awoke, he clamored again in the universal volopic for refreshment. Had it and went to sleep again. When he grew older, the wise men told him the worst thing in all this world of many good and bad things that he could do was to eat just before going to sleep. But the baby, not having learned the language of the wise men, did this very worst of all bad things, and having no fear of the wise men defiantly throw upon it. He looked young, but made himself at home with the easy assurance of an old traveller. Knew the best room in the house, demanded it, and got it. Nestled into his mother's arms as though he had been measured for them. Found that gracious hollow that God made in his mother's shoulder that fit his head as pillows of down never could. Cried when they took him away from it, when he was a tiny baby, with no language but a cry. Cried once again, twenty-five or thirty years afterward, when God took it away from him. All the languages he had learned, and all the eloquent phrasing the colleges had taught him, could not then voice the sorrow of his heart so well as the tears he tried to check. Poor little baby, had to go to school the first day he got here, had to begin his lessons at once, got praised when he learned them, got punished when he missed them. Bid his own toes and cried when he learned there was pain in this world. Studied the subject forty years before he learned in how many ways suffering can be self-inflicted. Reached for the moon and cried because he couldn't get it. Reached for the candle and cried because he could. First lessons in menstruation took him fifty or sixty years of hard reading to learn why God put so many beautiful things out of our longing reach. Made everybody laugh long before he could laugh himself by going into a temper because his clothes didn't fit him or his dinner wasn't served promptly. Just like a man, the nurse said, nobody in the family could tell where he got his temper. Either he brought it with him or found it wrapped in a dress to his room when he got here. At any rate he began to use it very shortly after his arrival. Always said he lost his temper when most certainly he had it and was using it. Played so hard sometimes that it made him cry. Took him a great many years to learn that too much play is apt to make anybody cry. By and by he learned to laugh. That came later than some of the other things, much later than crying. It is a higher accomplishment. It is much harder to learn and much harder to do. He never cried unless he wished and felt just like it. But he learned to laugh many, many times when he wanted to cry. Grew so after a while that he could laugh with a heart so full of tears they glistened in his eyes. Then people praised his laughter the most. It was in his very eyes, they said. Lapped one baby day to see the moats dance in the sunshine. Lapped at them once again, though not quite so cheerily, many years later when he discovered they were only moats. Cried one baby day when he was tired of play and wanted to be lifted in the mother arms and sung to sleep. Cried again one day when his hair was white because he was tired of work and wanted to be lifted in the arms of God and hushed to rest. Wished one half his life that he was a man then turned around and wished all the rest of it that he was a boy. Seeing, hearing, playing, working, resting, believing, suffering and loving, all his life long he kept on learning the same things he began to study when he was a baby. End of Section 1. Section 2 of Chimes from a Jester's Bells by Robert J. Burdett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Deborah Lynn. Chimes from a Jester's Bells by Robert J. Burdett. Section 2. The Story of Rollo. 1. Learning to Breathe When Rollo was a very little boy, so small indeed that his feet did not reach one-third of the way down to the hem of his long white dress, which reached only halfway to the floor, Rollo's father, who never considered it a hardship to himself, to tap his reservoir of learning at any time and let a stream of wisdom flow forth to irrigate the sterile intellectuality of adjacent mankind, said to Rollo's mother, My dear, I think it is about time that Rollo should be taught to speak English and breathe through his nose. Rollo's mother at that moment was conversing with Rollo's father's son in a strange, uncombed language with a limited vocabulary and a vast number of terminations in I.E. in so much that her remarks sounded very much like the catalog of what was formerly known in the United States as a female seminary. For a moment, as is the manner of a woman entertaining a baby, Rollo's mother continued steadfastly to ignore Rollo's father, the sun, moon, and stars, the seas, and all that in them is, the earth and the heavens above it, as complacently and tranquilly and happily as though there were but two creatures in all the universe, a mother and a baby. The effect of this treatment varies upon different subjects. A woman understands it and does not mind it. In fact, even though she never had a baby of her own, she enters into the rhapsody with all her heart. But men are otherwise affected. A narrow-minded man it makes jealous. A conceited man it irritates. It makes an ambitious man thoughtful. A right-minded man it amuses. He rather enjoys it, especially if he has a paternal interest in the infant monopoly. At length, without withdrawing her eyes from the baby, Rollo's mother found time to reply to Rollo's father in a mere parenthesis. She said, or seemed to say, as though her thoughts were far, far away from her words, I never heard of a baby breathing through its nose. Being only a woman, she had never heard of a great many things pertaining to babies, which are matters of commonplace information among men. Then, speaking to the baby and at her husband with great animation and intense earnestness, she added, Was he as he itty-mousy-wousy made for if he has a beezy so he knowsy-wousy? Wants he beezy so his itty-mousy-wousy so he doesy-bessoms? At this, Mr. Holliday, who was Rollo's father, turned pale and caught hold of his hair with both hands and held himself firmly in his chair. Thus he doubtless prevented himself from committing assault with intent to do bodily harm. Mr. Holliday was a kindhearted man, although a philanthropist, but he was also a very wise man, and he knew that the social position which he occupied, which is now termed by those Americans who make money by note and spell by ear, the upper-middle class, did not permit him to correct the women of his household with that freedom enjoyed by the more highly-privileged aristocracy and the lower classes, pronounced crosses. The environment of the unhappy upper-middle class is indeed very narrow. Freedom lies beyond either of its boundaries above or below. Either Sean McGonagall or the Duke of Astorbelt may sit down to his dinner in his shirt sleeves. Either the Prince or Knuck Bunkerman may give shady banquets with police court supplements, and the standing of these actors and their respective social scales is not affected. But a bookkeeper with a large family and a small salary or a preacher must wear a white shirt and a most uncomfortable collar, even in the sacred privacy of home life. The luxuries of moral and social undress are either too cheap or too expensive for the upper-middle class. Mr. Holliday knew this. Indeed, he knew about everything that one man could know on the same day, and he explained it to Rallo's mother, although much he doubted if she understood him. However, he was not a man to be disturbed by a little thing like that. The sound of his own voice, even in his stormiest moments, had a soothing effect upon him. Sometimes when alone, he would set his mouth going and sit in his chair with his eyes closed, listening to it as one listens to sweet and inspiring music. The healthy child, said Mr. Holliday, instinctively breathes through its nose until it is misled by false teaching and incorrect training by incompetent women. The first thing any child does, replied Rallo's mother, is to open his mouth wide as he can and cry for half an hour louder than a full-grown man can shout. He has no use whatever for a nose except to snuffle with. Well, said Mr. Holliday, that is because it is a baby and has no more sense. But he is now old enough to know better, and I am not going to have him grow up with the lower part of its face open all the time like a fish out of water. He shall breathe properly, or I shall not allow it to breathe in my presence. And you must not encourage him in this shiftless disposition to breathe with the greater part of its facial anatomy and two-thirds of the organs of speech and rudimentary mastication. So, saying Mr. Holliday, said to Rallo, firmly but kindly, now Rallo, close your mouth and inhale the atmosphere by filtration through the nasal passages. Do you hear? Rallo blinked his eyes to express that he heard, and opening his mouth somewhat wider than it was before, breathed through it as easily as though he had had a steady job of breathing for ten years instead of ten months. His father was a man not to be trifled with. He was a new man who wore bloomers and knew that the old-fashioned ideas about children were all wrong and that a child's education should begin as soon as his intelligence is sufficiently developed to enable him to discern when he is hungry, or when the nurse from the agricultural, mechanical, and chemical training school for advanced nurses of the higher nursing has fastened his garments to the flesh of his back with a safety pin. He said, Rallo, you must not trifle with me. You understand what I say very well. If you do not, you must ask me to repeat my remarks more distinctly and in simpler language, which is not at all necessary. I will not humor you in any childishness. Now, once more, I command you to close your lips and perform the operation of breathing through the nasal orifices. So saying, he placed his hands on Rallo's mouth. A muffled roar followed and Rallo's face became purple. Rallo's father took his hand away to see what caused the discoloration. Rallo immediately followed up the advantage gained by his childish ruse. By a sudden act of inhalation, he filled his lungs with about 96 cubic inches of complimental air, then deftly depressing the rear of the cricoid cartilage. He stretched the vocal cords to their utmost tension, which he knew would produce the highest real note most effective for his purpose. He then released the strain upon his costal cartilages, sent a volume of air up the trachea and through the organs of phonation, once it issued from his wide open mouth in a yell which even Mr. Holliday, who knew more than he could carry at one time, afterward admitted he had never heard equaled. Instantly reversing the action of the expiratory muscles and bringing into violent action the muscles of inspiration, Rallo quickly refilled his lungs, the two sacular organs occupying the thorax, and repeated the former operation. This, when continued for any length of time, is called fretting by grandmothers, weeping by aunts, crying by mothers, howling by fathers, yelling by uncles, squalling by big brothers, and a great many things which very few can spell and nobody should pronounce by the neighbors. In a short time Rallo's father was out of sight, having seized his hat and hastened away to consult an eminent artist whose name the ethics of his profession forbids us to print. This is forbidden indeed by the ethics of two professions, journalism and medicine. The ethics of journalism demand from forty to two hundred and fifty cents a line in advance. These ethics are hard to get over. After teaching Rallo to breathe, Mr. Holliday said he had a note to pay that would keep him busy in his laboratory inventing excuses for the next four years, and he would permit Rallo's mother to teach his son to speak the English language correctly. Rallo's mother, left to her own methods, taught her little son to mangle the English grammar even seven times more than it was want to be mangled by the wise men who invented it. She taught him to speak correctly in twenty-five or thirty easy lessons every day. Rallo's mother was a painfully ignorant woman. She had no knowledge of training a child by the carpenter's shop boiler room and general machine shop methods. She thought the baby's instructions in house ventilation, practical plumbing, village sanitation, mining engineering, the care of the sick, general sewage, water filtration, mind cure and applied hypnotism might be deferred with safety until his seventh year at least. Poor woman! She had a foolish old-fashioned notion, six or seven thousand years old, that a baby was a sweet little bundle of helplessness, something to coddle and cuddle and coo over. So she talked to her baby in I.E.'s until she nearly drove Mr. Holliday mad, and Rallo picked up the language with wonderful precocity, such as the natural depravity of the human race. Mother and baby could read each other's faces, and Rallo would crow or coo, laugh or look serious in faithful reflection of the face that bent over him. It was a poor, weak, antiquated method, far, far behind the hot-house enforcing-room system, but it suited Rallo and he learned all the time. What dreams he had when he pillowed his dimpled face upon her snowy breast, what confidences they had in the silly talk of baby-land when he woke and held long conversations of, ah-goo, ah-goo-goo, ah-goo-goo-lee, Google-a-goo, he never told. But it drew them very close to each other. Pain was soothed, trouble was driven away, and fears allayed. The sun shone and the birds sang when the mother eyes looked down at him, and the mother lips rained soft kisses and baby nonsense upon his face. So Rallo lay in his mother's lap, content, happy, studious, learning more and more every day, giving new inflections and startling variations to his original tongue by sucking his thumbs in the midst of the goo-a-goo-ee. While with his chubby feet, his mother called them tootsie-wootsies, from the stronghold of her lap, he kicked brave defiance at all the baby-building in this scientific, half-taught, old world of fads. A world that never did and never does and never will offer a baby anything, one half so good and sweet and helpful and instructive, as old-fashioned mother-love without a freak frenzy or ism in it. Spell and define. Paragoric, omniscience, man, guglu-guglu, incomprehensibility, spoon food, insomnia, pedestrianism, nocturn. What is meant by cerebral activity? And how many men does this develop before death? Name one. How many scales has a fish, an opera? Why did Rallo's father consult an artist? What is an artist? Has an ass more ears than a man? Why not? How many men think they know as much as Rallo's father? Name the exception. And what was the cause of his death? What is meant by rats? End of Section 2. Section 3 of Chimes from a Jester's Bells by Robert J. Burdette. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Deborah Lynn. Chimes from a Jester's Bells by Robert J. Burdette. Section 3. The Story of Rallo. 2. Learning to Dress. One morning, while Rallo was still sufficiently or rather more than sufficiently inconsiderate of his father's feelings and wishes to remain somewhat of a baby, although a great many wise people who never had any babies insisted that he was quite old enough to begin to take care of himself and assist his father a little about the house, his father said, I am sure you are sensible enough to realize that you are too old to be so young as you would have been had you not been born until a later period of your existence, say, sometime during the month subsequent, or even in the following year. You were born on the 10th of April, and I know a great many boys who were not born until late in September, some even in the closing week of December, who are at this time nearly 16 years old pursuing their studies at school or learning useful trades at which they will ultimately be able to strike several times a year, and here you are yet lingering in your second year. I am willing to allow you reasonable time to grow up, but you must not waste too much of your life in idle and unproductive infancy. You have now been a child for a year and a half. Dr. Bondust, A-B-A-M-P-H-D-L-L-D, who called on me yesterday to ascertain when I was going to send you to school, told me that when he was your age he wore pantaloons and could strap a razor, although I believe he did not begin to shave himself until some years afterward. I don't believe, said Rallo's mother, that Dr. Bondust ever was so young as Rallo. He may have been as small early in his life, but I think he was as old when he was born as he is today. But Mr. Holliday said, somewhat sternly, that such a remark was unworthy of any sane person. All human beings, he said at some time during their lives, were infants for a longer or shorter period. Still, Rallo's mother insisted that she knew some people who may have been infants, as in their mature years they continued to be, but they never had been babies, which was something altogether different. No one, she a bird, who had ever been a baby, even for a little while, entirely outgrew the condition of babyhood. She read in a history of the war, the large one which she used to block the front door open, how soldiers, great bearded men, strong and brave, struck down by the terrible bullets on the battlefield, cried, Mother, as they fell to their death, and other soldiers dying of wounds in the white-walled hospitals, passed away moaning, Mother, Mother, as though they were children again, and there was but one hand and one voice in all the world could soothe the cruel pain that was killing them hour by hour. All men, she said, were babies all their lives, if they had ever been babies at all, and had had real mothers, and especially if they had had an aunt and a grandmother. Any woman who ever had the care of a grown man on her hands knew this. Rallo's mother blushed a little as she concluded her speech, which was an unusually long one for her, and Rallo's father looked at her for a moment in mute astonishment. Then he said, It is not becoming in me to pursue a subject so frivolously treated. To resume my remarks by returning to them, I think Rallo should now learn to dress himself, and as I know your partiality will not permit you to be sufficiently firm with him, you may go downstairs and leave him with me. You may have to help him a little with some of the hard things, she said, turning as she passed out the door, with a look that fell across the cradle like a bar of sunshine. Rallo answered the look with a joyous shout in their own language, to which his mother nodded a reply, and then left him alone with a good and wise man, his father. Now, Rallo, said Mr. Holiday, it is time for you to arise and put on your garments. Get up and dress yourself, my son," he added, kindly translating his remark into what he considered absolutely purile baby talk. Come! A brief interval of silence followed, during which Mr. Holiday investigated a number of singular-looking garments of Liliputian dimensions which were arranged for his son's toilet. He gave an ejaculation of astonishment as he lifted the child from his cradle and placed him in the big bed which Rallo had learned to regard as his campus and gymnasium. Then he turned and shouted toward the open door, in the voice of an elocutionist shouting to a deaf man in the adjacent settlement. Look here! Talk about dressing this child. Why, he has on more clothes now than I wear to town. What under this sun do you do with all the things he sleeps in? The rustle of a woman's dress, which rose quite near the door and faded away down the hall, would have indicated to the female mind that Rallo's father was expending an undue amount of vocal force in addressing Rallo's mother, and that she was, indeed, making an offering at that moment before she answered the hail. Even the baby's face, as it turned in the direction of the half-audible sound with surprising quickness, showed that Rallo was aware that his mother had not gone into neutral waters, but was standing by and large within reach of his signals. Her message came drifting back. Take off everything he has on. As the music came floating into the room, Rallo gave a little crow and looked at the door as though he might see the musician follow. Your mother is not going to dress you this morning, Rallo, said his father, interpreting the expected look with masculine penetration. I am going to teach you to dress yourself, and will render you only such assistance as may be absolutely necessary. He shook out the smallest article of infantile garments he could find, and, after examining it, minutely cried, Which goes on first! There was no answer from any direction, and he turned to his son and said, Rallo, I will not endure to be trifled with much longer. You know, or rather will you tell me, which is the top end of this thing? What? Why do you not answer me? What is this which I hold in my hand? He went on in the tone of a prestidigitator performing the second sight act with a silver watch borrowed from the subject for the occasion. Speak quickly, Rallo. I wish to know if your mother calls these two rudimentary sleeves, which appear to be united by a strip of some woven fabric, a shirt. Hmm? You will not tell me? Well then, you may put it on without knowing what it is. Put it on, Rallo. That's Papa's good boy. Show Papa which side you put on before, and then Papa will show you which side goes behind. Rallo looked up into his father's face, and twisting one thumb into his mouth to assist his articulation, gurgled a good with great fluency, removing his thumb now and then to say Papa and Mama, and to make a few soft noises, imitative of the dialect of the domestic pets in barnyard cattle and fowls, displaying decided excellence and originality in reproducing the song of the cow, and the gentle challenge of a soft-voiced, peace-loving rooster on a Quaker farm at Kennet Square. Rallo's father listened for a moment, looking as wise as a woman listening to the Latin oration at a college commencement. A man does not look wise under this cataract of erudition. He looks foolish, as though he had been caught listening to something he had no business to hear. Presently Mr. Holliday said, Very well. If you will not begin without some assistance, Rallo, I will help you a little. But you must not expect me to do everything for you as your mother does. Now keep still, Rallo. You must be patient or you will never learn to dress yourself. You must not fidget in that manner, Rallo. You must keep still. However am I going to get your head and arms through a thing that has no hole in it when you try to put them all through at once? Any woman who would keep your head still, Rallo, make a straight jacket like this for a- Rallo! Christian child to wear out to be- Hold still! Sent to the insane. What are you trying to do? Sit still. Put out your foot. The other one. The other one. The other one! Doesn't the child know which is his other foot? Turn around. The other way. This way. Sit down. Stand up. Oh, Saint Sebastian, that pin went clear through my thumb. Hold up your head. Hold up. Pure. Red. Do you understand that? Hold your legs straight. This one. What lunatic tied this string full of knots. Oh, in the name of common sense is a man expected to fasten a thing that has no buttons. Put out your hand. Turn around. Shut up your noise. Stand still. Oh, murder, there's another pin. Don't wave your arms about that way. This isn't a swimming school. Rallo! Put out your foot. Hold your legs stiff. Here, he roared, turning toward the door. Come upstairs quick. What did I tell you? You've ruined this boy for life. He hasn't a sound bone or normal joint in his body. Every one of them worked both ways. You've made a helpless cripple of him forever by your foolish woman's coddling. Before his appeal for help was ended, Rallo's mother was in the room with such suddenness as fairly startled Mr. Holliday, whose nerves were somewhat strained by recent experiences. She saw Rallo sitting in the middle of the bed with his arms tightly manacled to the sides of his head by a twisted shirtlet which crossed his face in many folds, concealing from sight all his features, saved two tear-brimmed blue eyes, and at the same time effectually smothering all attempts at speech, even of the most primitive character. Well, said Mr. Holliday defensively, that's the way he told me it went on. She gave a little reassuring laugh, with an inflection of amusement in it, bent over the baby, gave the rebellious garment a gentle twist, a shadow of a touch, a faint and a jerk, and there it was on the plump little body as though it grew there. She drew a pair of shapeless stockings over two legs that had just enough knees in them to keep the dimples from spilling out. She gave a pat here and a caress there. She smoothed this and folded that, and all the while she cooed in the baby crowed. Presently Mr. Holliday said, I now perceive, Rallo, that you can go on by yourself with the assistance I have given you. I hope you will be dressed in time for breakfast, and I trust it will never again be necessary for me to assist you in making your morning toilet. And indeed Mr. Holliday's wisdom was justified of herself. He was never cast for that part again. Half an hour later, when that good man went to the breakfast table, he was pleased to see the little boy sitting in his high chair, completely dressed. His face washed till it shone like the day, his hair neatly brushed, his eyes bright as the morning glories peeping in at the window. Mr. Holliday bent to kiss the restless little head as he went to his own seat, and through the blessing that morning, Rallo played a lively accompaniment on his plate with his spoon, while, in a bird-like voice, he sang a sweet little hymn, the words and music of which he had composed himself. Goo-goo, Goo-goo-boo, Oh-boo, Mama-goo-doo, Oo-doo-hoo, Gob-la-wa, Ba-wa-wa, Goo-ba-pa-pa, Ob-le-goo-ba-la-wa. And really, it made the bread as sweet as Mr. Holliday's more formal grace. Spell and define. Pin, labyrinthine, perforation, button, noncomatibus, exclamatory, knot, womanly, snarled. Can a man fasten anything with a pin? Why not? How does a woman pin a glass knob on a bureau drawer? In a shed, weighing four pounds, there are nine hundred and fifty-seven billion, six hundred and thirty-nine million, two hundred and fifty-seven thousand bones. How many, then, are there in a man weighing a hundred and fifty-seven pounds? What is the age of a baby? Analyze and parse the following sentence. If he had have known what difficulties he would have encountered, he would not have attempted it. Of what part of speech is of? Of what part of man are his clothes? If so, how many? Name three. End of section three. Section four of Chimes from a Jester's Bells by Robert J. Burdette. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Deborah Lynn. Chimes from a Jester's Bells by Robert J. Burdette. Section four. The story of Rallo. Three. Learning to read. When Rallo was five years young, his father said to him one evening, Rallo, put away your roller skates and bicycle. Carry that rowing machine out into the hall and come to me. It is time for you to learn to read. Then Rallo's father opened the book which he had sent home on a truck and talked to the little boy about it. It was Bancroft's history of the United States, half complete in 23 volumes. Rallo's father explained to Rallo and Mary his system of education with special reference to Rallo's learning to read. His plan was that Mary should teach Rallo 15 hours a day for 10 years and by that time Rallo would be half through the beginning of the first volume and would like it very much indeed. Rallo was delighted at the prospect. He cried aloud, oh Papa, thank you very much. When I read this book clear through all the way to the end of the last volume may I have another little book to read? No, replied his father. That may not be because you will never get to the last volume of this one. For as fast as you read one volume the author of this history or his heirs, executors, administrators or assigns will write another as an appendix. So even though you should live to be a very old man like the boy preacher this history will always be 23 volumes ahead of you. Now Mary and Rallo this will be a hard task pronounced TOSC for both of you and Mary must remember that Rallo is a very little boy and must be very patient and gentle. The next morning after the one preceding it Mary began the first lesson. In the beginning she was so gentle and patient that her mother went away and cried because she feared her little daughter was becoming too good for this sinful world and might soon spread her wings and fly away and be an angel. But in the space of a short time the novelty of the expedition wore off and Mary resumed running her temper which was of the old fashioned low pressure kind just forward of the firebox on its old schedule. When she pointed to A for the seventh time and Rallo said W she tore the page out by the roots hid her little brother such a whack over the head with the big book that it said his birthday back six weeks slapped him twice and was just going to bite him when her mother came in. Mary told her that Rallo had fallen down stairs and torn his book and raised that dreadful lump on his head. This time Mary's mother restrained her emotion and Mary cried. But it was not because she feared her mother was pining away. Oh no, it was her mother's rugged health and virile strength that grieved Mary as long as the seance lasted which was during the entire performance. That evening Rallo's father taught Rallo his lesson and made Mary sit by and observe his methods because he said that would be normal instruction for her. He said, Mary you must learn to control your temper and curb your impatience if you want to wear low neck dresses and teach school. You must be sweet and patient or you will never succeed as a teacher. Now Rallo, what is this letter? I don't know, said Rallo resolutely. That is A, said his father sweetly. Huh? Replied Rallo, I know that. Then why did you not say so? Replied his father so sweetly that Jonas the hired boy sitting in the corner licked his chops. Rallo's father went on with the lesson. What is this Rallo? I don't know, said Rallo hesitatingly. Sure, asked his father. You do not know what it is? Nuck, said Rallo. It is A, said his father. A what? Asked Rallo. A nothing, replied his father. It is just A. Now what is it? Just A, said Rallo. Do not be flipped, my son, said Mr. Holliday, but attend to your lesson. What letter is this? I don't know, said Rallo. Don't fib to me, said his father gently. You said a minute ago that you knew. That is N. Yes, sir, replied Rallo meekly. Rallo, although he was a little boy, was no slouch if he did wear bibs. He knew where he lived without looking at the door plate. When it came time to be meek there was no boy this side of the planet Mars who could be meeker on shorter notice. So he said, Yes, sir, with that subdued and well-pleased alacrity of a boy who has just been asked to guess the answer to the conundrum. Well, you have another piece of pie? Well, said his father rather suddenly, what is it? M, said Rallo confidently. N, yelled his father in three-line gothic. N, echoed Rallo in lowercase nonpareil. B, A, N, said his father. What does that spell? Cat, suggested Rallo. A trifle, uncertainly. Cat, snapped his father with a sarcastic inflection. B, A, N, cat? Where were you raised? Ban. B, A, N, ban, say it. Say it or I'll get at you with a skate strap. B, A, N, banned, said Rallo who was beginning to wish that he had a rain check and could come back and see the remaining innings some other day. Ban, shouted his father. B, A, N, ban, ban, now say ban. Ban, said Rallo with a little gasp. That's right. His father said in an encouraging tone you will learn to read one of these years if you give your mind to it. All he needs, you see Mary, is a teacher who doesn't lose patience with him the first time he makes a mistake. Now Rallo, how do you spell B, A, N, ban? Rallo started out timidly on C, A then changed to D, O and finally compromised on H, E, N. Your holiday made a pass at him with volume one but Rallo saw it coming and got out of the way. B, A, N, his father shouted B, A, N, ban, ban, ban, ban, ban. Now go on if you think you know how to spell that. What comes next? Oh, you're enough to tire the patience of Job. I have a good mind to make you learn by the Pollard system and begin where you leave off. Go ahead, why don't you what are you waiting for? Read on, what comes next? Well, I cropped, of course. Anybody ought to know that. C, R, O, F, T, cropped, bankrupt. What does that apostrophe mean? I mean, what does that punctuation mark between T and S stand for? You don't know? Take that then. Whack! What comes after bankrupt? Spell it. Spell it, I tell you and don't be all night about it. Can't? A? Well, read it then. If you can't spell it, read it. H, I, S, T, O, R, Y, history. Bancroft's history of the United States. Now, what does that spell? I mean, spell that. Spell it. Oh, go away. Go to bed. Stupid, stupid child. He added as the little boy what weeping out of the room. He'll never learn anything so long as he lives. I declare he has tired me all out and I used to teach school in Trivillie Township, too. Taught one all winter in District Number 3 when Nick Worthington was county superintendent and had my salary. Look here, Mary, what do you find this grammar to giggle about? You go to bed, too, and listen to me. If Rallo can't read that whole book clear through without making a mistake tomorrow night, you'll wish you had been born without a back. That's all. The following morning, when Rallo's father drove away to business, he paused the moment as Rallo stood at the gate for a final goodbye kiss. For Rallo's daily goodbyes began at the door and lasted as long as his father was in sight. Mr. Holliday said, someday, Rallo, you will thank me for teaching you to read. Yes, sir, replied Rallo, respectfully, and then added, but not this day. Rallo's head, though it had here and there transient bumps consequent upon football practice, was not naturally or permanently hilly. On the contrary, it was quite level. Spell and define tact, exasperation, lamb, imperturbability, red-hot, philosopher, abolition, note, terrier. Which end of a retan hurts the more? Why does reading make a full man? Is an occasional whipping good for a boy? At precisely what age does corporal punishment cease to be effective, and why? State, in exact terms, how much better are grown-up people without the rod than little people with it, and why? When would a series of sound whippings have been of the greatest benefit to Solomon, when he was a godly young man, or an idolatrous old one? In order to reform this world thoroughly, then, whom should we thrash? The children are the grown-up people, and why? If, then, the whipping post should be abolished in Delaware, why should it be retained in the nursery and the schoolroom? Write on the board in large letters the following sentence. If a boy ten years old should be whipped for breaking a window, what should be done to a man thirty-five years old for breaking the third commandment? End of Section 4 Section 5 of Chimes from a Jester's Bells by Robert J. Burdette. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Deborah Lynn. Chimes from a Jester's Bells by Robert J. Burdette. Section 5. The Story of Rallo. Recording to Work. One day, when Rallo was about nine years old, his father said to Rallo's mother that it was about time that boy was beginning to earn his salt. When Rallo heard this, he was very much pleased and so expressed himself, because if there was anything in the list of edible foods which he liked less than all the rest, it was salt. Therefore, he reasoned with himself, if his salt was all he was expected to earn, it was that to last him all his life merely by working between times when he was tired of thinking what he would like to play at next. Without giving all his reasons therefore, Rallo said to his father that he was very glad indeed it was time for him to earn his salt as he thought perhaps he might use less of it if he had to earn it. His father looked at him earnestly for a moment as though he was undecided whether to reply to his little son or say something. Rallo followed his father down the path that ran by the side of the house. He found a large resident torpedo in his pocket left over from the 4th of July. Being an economical boy thanks to the careful teaching of his wise and prescient father, Rallo did not wish to waste the torpedo. Therefore, he threw it at his uncle George's box terrier which lay curled up asleep on the doorstep. The terrier was having bad dreams evidently for just as the torpedo reached him and exploded, he sprang to his feet with a loud and co-mingled chorus of startled yelps and angry bark in the manner of a dog that finds himself surrounded by hostile foes with belligerent intentions. The noise attracted the attention of Rallo's uncle George who was sitting in his room upstairs reading, Rallo's uncle George was a haverford man and consequently read all the time he was not doing anything else. Rallo's great ambition was to grow up and be a man just like his uncle George. And Rallo's father who loved his brother-in-law dearly said that he probably would if he never grew any older than he was now. This pleased Rallo very much indeed. When he repeated his father's encouraging remark to his uncle George, uncle George laughed also the hollow mocking laugh of a man in pain. Hearing the fox terrier, uncle George leaned far out of the window so suddenly that he knocked off his high silk hat which, being a senior, he wore all the time. The hat fell in the path directly in front of Rallo's father who, not seeing it, this being his nearsighted day kicked it over the flowering current bush and it fell into the wheelbarrow where Fanny, Rallo's little brother, was playing. Fanny immediately threw himself flat on the hat and shouted in childish glee, down. Then he was a very little boy who was too young to know that a hat was not a football. He then punted it to Rallo who passed it up to the window shouting as he did so, our ball, uncle George. Rallo did not understand what uncle George said but supposed it had reference to some of the new plays known only to students. In the meantime his father had brought a large glistening cylindrical object from the kitchen porch. Now Rallo, said Mr. Holiday, for it was indeed he. Here is a nice little watering pot which your mother and I bought you for a birthday present. It was indeed a very fine watering pot made of galvanized iron capable of holding about eight gallons and had painted upon it in large red letters for a good boy. The letters had been hand-painted by Jonas. Jonas made very nice large plain letters and his custom of printing the letter R backward made his work very difficult to counterfeit. So you see, Rallo, said Mr. Holiday, if ever you should lose your little sprinkler you can easily identify it if you should recognize it when you recover it. Water, continued Mr. Holiday, speaking, weighs ten pounds to the gallon when drawn from a country well and perhaps twice as much when taken from a city hydrant. That will make your little watering pot when filled way about 94 pounds which is not very much for a great boy like you to lift. I would carry it myself where it not that my old wound which I received in both legs while carrying dispatches from the battlefield to Washington during the Battle of Bull Run is troubling me again today. A gurgling kind of chuckling noise from the window of Rallo's Uncle George's room indicated that Uncle George had a very funny book and had, or had not, quite forgotten his anger about the accidental mistakes which incidentally had happened to happen to his hat. Uncle George, being a hard student, read a great many funny books to take the strain off his mind, he said. Rallo's father said the constant strain on Uncle George's mind was probably what pulled it out so thin. And here Rallo, said his father, is the pump. Exclaimed Rallo in tones of great surprise. Yes, replied his father, with the pleased and complacent air of a man who is revealing a great secret, this is the pump. Now, in order to procure water for drinking, culinary or toilet purposes, you must raise the liquid from the bottom of the well by suction which you will produce by agitating the handle of the pump in a perpendicular manner, alternately raising and lowering it. He was alternately asked Rallo, who was a very intelligent boy and was fond of asking many, very many, oh, very great many questions, preparatory to beginning any piece of work in which he felt no restless desire to engage. He wished to know all about the work, he said before he began, and then he could go at it advisedly. He did not care, he said, if it took all day to learn about it. He never considered it fatiguing, not very fatiguing that is, to hear his father talk when Rallo was at liberty to select the topic of conversation. Conversation in the holiday family was a term applied to a favorite family diversion or occupation of looking wise while Mr. Holiday improved the time. Alternately, replied Rallo's father, means in reciprocal succession, Rallo's Uncle George's Mary Laugh rang out in a clear many-syllable volley from the open window. Rallo wished he knew what he was laughing at. He determined to ask him at dinner. Reciprocal succession repeated Rallo in order to fix the definition firmly in his mind so that he would know what he was doing when he was pumping. That is how I get the suction on the water. No, snarled Mr. Holiday pleasantly it isn't. Don't you know anything? It means by turns. Push the pump handle down down as far as it will go then you lift it up as high as you can, see? But it is down now, said Rallo. Well then, replied his father, you first lift it up. But, persisted Rallo, you said just now that I must push it down and now again you say I must first lift it up. Must I push it down and raise it up both at once the first time? Mr. Holiday gasped but controlled himself as they heard Rallo's Uncle George come to another joke in his book and said very patiently little stupid no if the handle is already down you first lift it up. But if it is up then you must first push it down and afterward keep up that regular alternation of motion or action. Keep it up and down, don't you mean? asked Rallo. Yes, said Mr. Holiday between his teeth as though his old wound were clenching him with renewed agony. Keep moving the handle up and down in alternation. In reciprocal suck session said Rallo. Yes, my son, said Mr. Holiday so sweetly that Rallo backed off two or three steps. Yes, I am glad to see that you have such an intelligent comprehension of the method of procuring water by the common suction pump. Is the other kind of pump easier to work? asked Rallo. No, replied his father. It is a great deal harder. But exclaimed Rallo with the eagerness of an industrious boy as he saw his father placing the water pot under the nose of the common suction pump. What if I should find the pump handle halfway up and halfway down? In that case, replied his father it would not make any difference which way you started. But if I should start it wrong exclaimed Rallo who hadn't far beyond his years and was really very anxious to learn to work but wanted to learn correctly. That is, if I should push the handle down when I ought to lift it up and raise it up when I should push it down would that make it pump the wrong way and pump all the water I had already pumped up back into the well again? No, yelled Mr. Holiday quietly. Of course not. Any lunatic would know better than that. After you get fairly started it doesn't matter how you work it. Then, said Rallo anxiously as though all these possible contingencies disturbed him in his impatience to get to work. If I stopped pumping and went into the house to get a drink it wouldn't do any harm if when I came back I should forget which way I had left the handle sticking while you little numbskull shouted Mr. Holiday with painstaking distinctness. Couldn't you see which way it was when you came back? Yes, said Rallo but that might not be the way I left it. It might have slipped down or jumped up and I wouldn't want to begin on the wrong stroke and maybe blow up the pump. Mr. Holiday turned black in the face and reached his right hand out toward the peach tree but just at that moment Uncle George came to a corker that was what he called it in his book and burst into such a shriek of laughter as made them both look toward the window. That's a dandy book Uncle George is reading, said Rallo wistfully. I'll bet it isn't the memoir of John Mooney Mead. It is some worthless trash, replied Rallo's father and then continued as he stood back to let Rallo get to the pump. Now, my son, let me see you. Does it make any difference asked Rallo which hand I pumped with first? No, called his father thoughtfully but if you don't take hold of it rather quicker and scat, I'll take hold of you with both hands in a way that you'll remember after you've forgotten how old you are. He shrieked the word with such explosive suddenness that the fox terrier sprang to his feet with a frightened bark and looked suspiciously at Rallo while Uncle George, who seemed to have finished his book and taken up his music lesson could be heard singing something that ended with a college yell. I'll give you a fine ear for music. Yes, it's English opera Italian. Roared Mr. Holiday who never lost patience with children for he knew they must be taught very lovingly. Yes! Now get hold of that pump and shake her up for first water or I'll shake the bones out of you. Rallo seized the pump handle with both hands and raising it as high as he could stood holding it arms-length above his head. This way he asked. Hey, snorted his father very sweetly indeed for he was pleased to see how rapidly Rallo was learning to work. Yes, that way. Well, he shouted as Rallo stood holding the handle high in the air. Are you going to stand there all day? Get a wiggle on you. Bring it down, I tell you. But it won't come down, replied Rallo. I am pushing as hard as ever I can. Pull it down then. Soft, patient tones. Haven't you got the little scent you were born with? If you go out alone, you'll get drawn on the jury. Pull it down. But, said Rallo, still holding the handle above his head. You said I must first raise it up as high as it would go and then push it down. You didn't say anything about pulling it down. I can't hold it up here much longer, either, he said. And indeed he was growing very red in the face. So was his father. Well, you hear me tell you now, roared Mr. Holiday, smiling until Rallo could see the manufacturer's trademark on the roof of his natural teeth. Pull it down. Here, this way. Get away from the pump. As Mr. Holiday, for it was he who addressed him, made a rush at him, Rallo, who was quite active for a boy of only nine years, let go the pump handle and dodged. It was an old-fashioned, early English pump handle quite feet long, quite gracefully curved with a round Queen Anne knob on the end, somewhat larger than a baseball, though, of course, not quite so hard. As Mr. Holiday came within range and Rallo let go all halts, as he afterward explained to his sister Mary, being in fear of bodily injury because he had seen his father monkeying, as Rallo called it, with the peach tree. The Elizabethan handle came down on the run, the Queen Anne knob catching Mr. Holiday on the top of the head with the most awful and resounding thwack. Rallo said it was a sock-dollager, but his Uncle George, whose vocabulary was perfectly Shakespearean, said it was a soliker, which, to quote from Uncle George's report, grasped him. They clustered in a mournful little group at the foot of the pump. Mr. Holiday sitting down and leaning limply against it, George asked Rallo's father questions, which they immediately answered themselves. Soon they were joined by Rallo's mother, who hearing them in conversation came out to see what they were having such a good time about. When they told her, she tried to look pleasant. I'm so sorry, she said, her sweet voice vibrate with sympathy, that you did not tell me this was going to happen. Were you trying to get water out of that pump? As Mr. Holiday could only nod his head diagonally, which might mean either yes or no, or both, or neither, and Uncle George was too busy rubbing on the witch hazel to answer, Rallo said, yes, at least, that is, I was. Well, replied Rallo's mother, you must not do so anymore, because the man took the rod out of it yesterday to mend the sucker. He said it did not work very well. But Rallo said that it seemed to work quite easily today. And then, as his father made a movement to rise, Rallo went away, not very far away, just about four miles down Mill Creek over the hill, the other side of Humphreys Mill, up past Fairview School, and so out to Montgomery Pike and around by Ardmore, home again. Spell and define, Arnica, Toil, investigation, Sucker, Bunko, Soldier, Student, Erie Edition, Well, at what speed does light travel? What is the highest velocity ever reached by a man working by the day? Has this record ever been broken? Two boys start from the same point at the same time, one going to school, the other to the old swimming hole, which arrives first at his destination. Yes, and why? How many miles farther does he have to go? Yes, Why does he run while the other boy walks? Which of these two boys will grow up to be a good and great man? And why? What becomes of the other boy? And why? Would you rather remain at home and dig plantain and dandelions out of the lawn than go fishing with the other boys? And why? What is the doom of all liars? End of section 5 Section 6 of Chimes from a Jester's Bells by Robert J. Burdette. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Deborah Lynn. Chimes from a Jester's Bells by Robert J. Burdette. Section 6 The Story of Rallo. 5. Learning to Play Early in the afternoon of the same day, Mr. Holiday came home bearing a large package in his arms. Not only seldom, but rarely, did anything come into the holiday homestead to afford the head of the family a text for sermonic instruction, if not, indeed, rational discourse. Depositing the package upon a hall table, he called to his son in a mandatory manner, Rallo, come to me. Rallo approached, but started with reluctant steps. He became reminiscently aware, as he hastily reviewed the events of the day, that in carrying out one or two measures for the good of the house, he had laid himself open to the investigation by a strictly partisan committee and the possibility of such an inquiry with its subsequent report grieved him. However, he hoped for the worst so that in any event he would not be disagreeably disappointed and came running to his father calling, yes, sir, in his cheeryest tones. This is the correct form in which to meet any possible adversity which is not yet in sight, because if it should not meet you, you are happy anyhow. And if it should meet you, you have been happy before the collision, see? Now, Rallo, said his father, you are too large and strong to be spending your leisure time playing baby games with your little brother, Thani. It is time for you to begin to be athletic. What is athletic? asked Rallo. Well, replied his father, who was an alumnus, pronounced Oloomnoos himself. In a general way, you are pantaloons, either 18 inches too short or 6 inches too long for you, and stand around and yell while other men do your playing for you. The reputation for being an athlete may also be acquired by wearing a golf suit to church or carrying a tennis racket to your meals. However, as I was about to say, I do not wish you to work all the time like a woman or even a small part of the time like a hired man. I wish you to adopt for your recreation your sport and pastime. Rallo interrupted his father to say that indeed he preferred games of that description to games of toil and labor. But as he concluded, little Thani, who was sitting on the porch, stepped with his book, suddenly read aloud in a staccato measure, I believe you, my boy, replied the man heartily. Read to yourself, Thani, said his father kindly and did not speak your syllables in that jerky manner. He decided into silence after making two or three strange gurgling noises in his throat, which Rallo, after several efforts, succeeded in imitating quite well. Being older than Thani, Rallo, of course, could not invent so many new noises every day as his little brother, but he could take Thani's noises, they being unprotected by copyright, and not only reproduce them but even improve upon them. This shows the advantage of the higher education. A little learning is a dangerous thing. It is well for every boy to learn that dynamite is an explosive of great power, after which it is still better for him to learn of how great power. Then he will not hit a cartridge with a hammer in order to find out, and when he dines in good society he can still lift his pie gracefully in his hand and will not be compelled to harpoon it with an iron hook at the end of his forearm. Rallo's father looked at the two boys attentively as they swallowed their noises and said, Now, Rallo, there is no sense in learning to play a man's game with a toy outfit. Here are the implements of a game which is called baseball in which I am going to teach you to play. So saying, he opened the package and handed Rallo a bat, a wagon-tongue terror that would knock the leather off a planet, and Rallo's eyes danced as he balanced it and pronounced it a lala. Is that a baseball bat? exclaimed Rallo innocently. Yes, my son, replied his father and here is a protector for the hand. Rallo took the large leather pillow and said, That's an infielder. It is a mitt, his father said, and here is the ball. As Rallo took the ball in his hands he danced with glee. That's a peach, he cried. It is a baseball, his father said. That is what you play baseball with. Is it? exclaimed Rallo inquiringly. Now, said Mr. Holliday as they went into the backyard followed by Thani, I will go to bat first and I will let you pitch so that I may teach you how. I will stand here at the end of the barn then when you miss my bat with the ball as you may sometimes do for you to not yet know how to pitch accurately the barn will prevent the ball from going too far. That's the backstop, said Rallo. Do not try to be funny, my son replied his father. In this great republic only a president of the United States is permitted to coin phrases which nobody can understand. Now observe me. When you are at bat you stand in this manner. And Mr. Holliday assumed the attitude of a timid man who has just stepped on the tail of a strange and irascible dog and is holding his legs so that the animal, if he can pull his tail out can escape without biting either of them. He then held the bat up before his face as though he was carrying a banner. Now Rallo, you must pitch the ball directly toward the end of my bat. Do not pitch too hard at first though you will tire yourself out before we begin. Rallo held the ball in his hands and gazed at it thoughtfully for a moment. He turned and looked at the kitchen windows as though he had half a mind to break one of them. Then, wheeling suddenly, he sent the ball whizzing through the air like a bullet. He passed so close to Mr. Holliday's face that he dropped the bat and his grammar in his nervousness and shouted, What are you throwing at? That's no way to pitch a ball. Pitch it as though you were playing a gentleman's game, not as though you were trying to kill a cat. Now pitch it right here, right at this place on my bat and pitch more gently. The first thing you know, you'll sprain your wrist and have to go to bed. Now try again. This time Rallo needed the ball gently as though he suspected it had been pulled before it was ripe. He made an offer as though he would throw it to Thani. Thani made a rush back to an imaginary first and Rallo, turning quickly, fired the ball in the general direction of Mr. Holliday. It passed about ten feet to his right, but nonetheless he made what Thani called a swipe at it that turned him around three times before he could steady himself. It then hit the end of the barn with a resounding crash as if he was snort with terror in his lonely stall. Thani called out in a nasal sing-song tone, strike one. Thani, said his father severely, do not let me hear a repetition of such language from you. If you wish to join our game, you may do so. If you will play in a gentlemanly manner, but I will not permit the use of slang about this house. Now Rallo, that was better, much better, but you must aim more accurately and pitch less violently. You will never learn anything until you acquire it, unless you pay attention while giving your mind to it. Now play ball, as we say. This time Rallo stooped and rubbed the ball in the dirt until his father sharply reprimanded him, saying, you untidy boy, that ball will not be fit to play with. Then Rallo looked about him over the surrounding country as though admiring the pleasant view and with the same startling abruptness as before, faced his father so swiftly that Thani said he could see it smoke. It passed about six feet to the left of the batsman, but Mr. Holiday, judging that it was coming dead for him, dodged, and the ball struck his high-so-cat with a boom like a drum, carrying it on to the backstop in its wild career. Take your base, shouted Thani, but suddenly checked himself, remembering the new rules on the subject of his umpiring. Rallo exclaimed his father, why do you not follow my instructions more carefully? That was a little better, but still the ball was badly aimed. You must not stare around all over creation when you are playing ball. How can you throw straight when you look at everything in the world except the bat you are trying to hit? You must aim right at the bat. Try to hit it. That's what the pitcher does. And Thani, let me say to you and for the last time that I will not permit the slang to die again and be more careful and more deliberate. Father, said Rallo, did you ever play baseball when you were a young man? Did I play baseball? Repeated his father. Did I play ball? Well, say I belonged to the sacred nine out in old Peoria, and I was a holy terror on third now, I tell you, one day, but just at this point in the history it occurred to Rallo to send the ball over the plate. He shut both eyes and dodged for his life, but the ball hit his bat and went spinning straight up in the air. Thani shouted, ran under it, reached up, took it out of the atmosphere and cried out. Thani, said his father sternly, another word, and you shall go straight to bed. If you do not improve in your habit of language I will send you to the reform school. Now Rallo, he continued kindly, that was a great deal better, very much better. I hit that ball with almost no difficulty. You are learning. But you will learn more rapidly if you do not expend so much unnecessary strength in throwing the ball. Once more now, and gently, I do not wish you to injure your arm. Rallo leaned forward and tossed the ball toward his father very gently indeed, much as his sister Mary would have done, only of course in a more direct line. Mr. Holiday's eyes lit up with their old fire as he saw the oncoming sphere. He swept his bat around his head with a fierce semi-circle, caught the ball fair on the end of it and sent it over Rallo's head, crashing into the kitchen window amid a jingle of glass and a crash of crockery, wild shrieks from the invisible maid servant in delighted howls from Rallo and Thani of, good boy, you own the town, all the way round. Mr. Holiday was a man whose nervous organism was so sensitive that he could not endure the lightest shock of excitement. The confusion and general uproar distracted him. Thani, he shouted, go into the house, go into the house and go right to bed. Thani, said Rallo in a low tone, you're suspended, that's what you get for jolly-ing the umpire. Rallo, said his father, I will not have you quarreling with Thani, I can correct him without your interference. And besides you have wrought enough mischief for one day, just see what you have done with your careless throwing. You careless inattentive boy, I would do right if I should make you pay for all this damage out of your own pocket money, and I would if you had any. I may do so nevertheless. And there is Jane bathing her eye at the pump, you have probably put it out by your wild pitching. If she dies I will make you wash the dishes until she returns. I thought all boys could throw straight naturally without any training. You discourage me. Now come here and take this bat and I will show you how to pitch a ball the glass in the township, and see if you can learn to bat any better than you can pitch. Rallo took the bat, poised himself lightly, and kept up a gentle oscillation of the stick while he waited. Hold it still, yelled his father, whose nerves were sorely shaken. How can I pitch a ball to you when you keep flourishing that club like an anarchist in procession? Hold it still, I tell you. Rallo dropped the bat to an easy slant over his shoulder and looked attentively at his father. The ball came in. Rallo caught it right on the nose of the bat and sent it whizzing directly at the pitcher. Mr. Holliday held his hand straight out before him and sped his fingers. I've got her, he shouted. And then the ball hit his hands, scattered them, and passed on against his chest with a jolt that shook his system to its foundations. A melancholy howl rent the air as he doubled up and tried to rub his chest and need all his fingers on both hands at the same time. Rallo, he gasped. You go to bed, too. Go to bed and stay there six weeks. And when you get up, put on one of your sister's dresses and play golf. You'll never learn to play ball if you practice a thousand years. I never saw such a boy. You have probably broken my lung and I do not suppose I shall ever use my hands again. You can't play tiddly-weeds. Oh, dear, oh, dear. Rallo sadly laid away the bat and the ball and went to bed and he sparred with pillows until tea time when they were bailed out of prison by their mother. Mr. Holliday had recovered his good humor. His fingers were multifariously bandaged and he smelled of Arnica like a drugstore. But he was reminiscent and animated. He talked of the old times and the old days and of Peoria and Hinman's as was his want-off as he felt boyish. In town-ball, he said, good old town-ball, there was no limit to the number on the side. The ring was anywhere from 300 feet to a mile in circumference according to whether we played on a vacant pinery lot or out on the open prairie. We tossed up a bat, wet or dry, for first choice and then chose the whole school on the sides. The bat was a board about the general shape of a Roman galley or, and not quite so wide as a barn door. The ball was of solid India rubber. A little fellow could hit it a hundred yards and the big boy with the hickory club could send it clear over the bluffs or across the lake. We broke all the windows in the schoolhouse the first day and finished up every pane of glass in the neighborhood before the season closed. The side that got its innings first kept them until school was out or the last boy died. Fun? Good game. Oh boy of these golden days paying fifty cents an hour for the privilege of watching a lot of hired men do your playing for you. Spell and define instruction instantaneity liniment miscalculation pastime contusion paralysis hasty super irrigation Can a boy learn anything without a teacher? Does the pupil ever know more than the instructor and why not? How long does it require one to learn to speak and write the Spanish language correctly in its easy lessons at home without a master? And in how many lessons can one be taught to walk Spanish? What is meant by a rudor? What is the difference between a rudor and a fan? Parse hudu What is the philology of crank? Describe a closely contested game of one old cat with diagrams. What is meant by a rank decision? Looks translate into colloquial English the phrase Good Eye Bill Put into bleaching board to Latin Rottenampire Why is he so called? End of section 6 Section 7of Chimes from Achester's Bells by Robert J. Brodette this librtałc's recording is in the public domain recording by Debra Lynn Chimes from ajustus The Story of Rallo 6. Learning to Travel Rallo had never been very far away from home, so one morning when Mr. Holliday had business in town he said to Rallo, Rallo, there is nothing which rounds out one's education so gracefully, which so symmetrically broadens one's ideas, gives such catholicity to the mind, so completely eradicates petty conceit and narrow egotism as travel, providing always that the man has some sense, not much, but just a little bit, before he sets out on his travels. If he be a fool, however, traveling only aggravates his complaint. A wise man who had a great deal to do with fools once wrote, Though thou shouldst spray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him. And this is true. He would still be a fool, pulverized indeed but all there, just as much fool as ever. Worse indeed he would be a pestle and fool. And Mr. Holliday smiled grimly but not unkindly at his little joke. Then he continued, Now my son, if you will be a good boy this morning, and saw up a lot of nice green limbwood for your mother, for this is baking day, and clean up the back yard, and cut the grass on the lawn, and lead the horse over to the blacksmith's shop, and tell Mr. Slaketroff that he has put the hind shoes on the forefeet, and I want them changed, and then hurry back and whitewash the henhouse, and get yourself nicely washed and dressed by noon, you may go to the village with me. Rallo clapped his hands with delight, and said he would be ready to go by eleven o'clock. Rallo then proceeded to bribe Thanny, principally with promises, to assist him with his morning chores. Thanny, who had quite a commercial mind, accepted these promissory notes at large discount, having learned that businessmen were in the habit of exaggerating the discount in proportion to the promissor's necessities. Rallo explained to Thanny that by cutting the limbwood an inch too long for the stove, it would last longer. But Thanny, whose shoulders were really quite sore, and whose back gave him considerable pain, said that he had reformed and was not going to play hooky nor cheat about anything any more. Rallo said that was right. He said he sometimes thought it was a pity that the pain from a licking did not last longer. He said that everybody in the world would probably join the church and be good if they didn't get over headaches and backaches so soon. If some man would invent a gad with which you could hit a boy a lick on the first of January that would smart until the end of December, everybody in the world would be as orderly and well-behaved and regular in their hours and meals, and as steady at their work as the convict in a well-conducted penitentiary. This was quite large talk from Rallo, but it was the result of constant association with his father. Thanny's teacher had had a long talk with him on the previous evening upon the subject of truancy. She was a very winsome woman, bright and sparkling, and when Thanny gave her some back talk, as he called it, she seized a retin with a grip that turned her knuckles white and counted all the stitches in the back seams of Thanny's jacket with it. The stitches held because Thanny's mother did her own sewing, but the retin looked tired for a week. The following morning Mr. Holliday inspected the teacher's work by the same method, and this was why Thanny was feeling superhumanly virtuous, because he had just parted from his father when Rallo approached him. Sure enough, Rallo was quite ready to go with his father early in the afternoon. Indeed, he was ready before his father was. As they drove out the gate, Mr. Holliday said, Did you get all your tasks completed, Rallo? To which Rallo replied, being deeply impressed with Thanny's lecture. Not quite, sir. This answer appeared to satisfy Mr. Holliday, and it gave Rallo a very broad margin. Indeed, Mr. Holliday discovered the following morning that the margin ran clear across the wolf of the job into the selvedge. They drove to the station in the German town, an indestructible vehicle which was invented in Pennsylvania several thousand years before the flood. None have been made since, although there are over a million in use. The German town is a wagon modeled after and in the livery of the Black Maria, in which anything from a picnic party to a siege gun can be hauled. It is somewhat less cheerful in appearance than a hearse, although not quite so heavy, however, as the old New England carry-all, of which it is probably a sport. That is, if it be not sacrilege to speak of such a combination as a sport. Mr. Holliday was a Puritan. His fathers came over with the pilgrims. Of course, no holidays were allowed on the Mayflower, but Mr. Holliday's great-grandfather registered himself as Fast Day and came through all right. The keenest expert could not detect any difference between the Massachusetts Fast Day, recently deceased, died of Jim-jams, probably, and the wildest Holliday that ever romped around as Christmas in Mexico or as the Fourth of July in Arizona. Rallo asked permission to drive, but his father said no. The horse might bolt and run away and the carriage would be broken and they might be killed. As Rallo had once seen a broken anvil, he did not doubt that some terrific convulsion of nature might strain one of the weaker parts of a German town. His father said that he had a drive-cotton mather, that was the name of the horse, with a tight rein and a firm wrist, for he was very high-spirited. Cotton mather was 110 years old. When he was a colt, of course, he was older than that. His neck, which was very long and flexible, fitted at the smaller end into the middle of his head. The large end, which was made for the collar, grew into his body. When they had traveled for quite a long distance out into the world, which lies all around Bryn Mauer and even projects a little ways into it between Easter Sunday and Carnival, Rallo's father allowed Rallo to take the reins, saying that he would watch him and teach him to drive. Rallo was very proud, albeit a trifle nervous. Presently they came to a cross-road, which is a place in the country at which anywhere from two to seven roads meet and cross at different angles, acute, obtuse, right, salient, and at one side of the crossing, far away from the focus, a fingerboard or guide post is set up by the supervisors. The fingerboard is nailed high upon the post. The name of the town indicated, and the number of miles is painted in small letters in gray paint on a drab ground, so that it is extremely difficult to read. But at the end of the board, the letter M, standing for miles, is painted bold, black, and large. Thus the average fingerboard presents this appearance to the traveler. Two, mmm, M. Why are the guideboards painted so dimly, asked Rallo? Because there is no reason for it, replied his father, that is why. It is one of the traditions of the office to make them in this way. And do I turn down this road to the left, the way the fingerboard points to go to Kikkapu town, asked Rallo? No, replied his father, you go in exactly the opposite direction. That is another tradition of the office. You see, my son, the guideboards are set up after this manner. The fingerboard is nailed to the post of the shop, which is the barn of the supervisor. They are then loaded into a wagon and sent out on the road in charge of a man who cannot read. He is instructed to set a post at every road crossing, which he does, setting the post firmly and making a good job of it without any reference to the direction in which the boards point. In this way, the traveler is more easily confused. He gets hopelessly lost and drives through more toll gates and pays more money into the coffers of the benevolent society which controls the roads in the interest of the wagon and repair shops. Now at this crossroad we turn to the right, pull on the right hand line. Rallo hastily began to pull in the slack, hand over hand, and as he coiled it neatly away, he was surprised to see Cotton Mather's head turning around and coming slowly after it until his solemn face was staring at the occupants of the German town. Pull away, cried Mr. Holiday, haul hard to Winderd, bring him around. But, said Rallo, I am afraid I will pull his head off. No you won't, replied his father. Keep on pulling. He'll begin to turn by and by. And so indeed he did. Cotton Mather had a habit when the driver put him on another tack of turning his head around after the drawing line as far as he could while he continued to move straight forward on the old course. Uncle George said he was a good horse before the wind but he hung in stays. However, he finally drifted around all right and got under way again picking up his feet one after another very soon after putting them down in regular alternation and moving them to locations on the ground somewhat further forward. In this way they made considerable progress. Rallo's father explained to him that if the horse did not move his feet in this manner but allowed them to remain where he deposited them, he would stand still and they would not get anywhere. Wherefore, my son, he continued, while it is a good thing for a man to put his foot down, and we often hear him commended for so doing, it is quite certain that the man who never does anything else will never go anywhere. It is quite important in making progress to pick your foot up and place it in advance of the other and keep on doing this. I once knew a man who prided himself greatly because he had acquired a reputation for putting his foot down. People, foolishly or with guile, I know not, praised him for it and he kept on doing it. But one morning after doing this for about fifty years he woke up and discovered that the world had been moving all this time and that his generation, fifty years beyond him, simply looked over its shoulder whenever they heard him put his foot down with a new stamp in the same old place, laughed and went on. When you hear of a man whose soul reputation is that he is a chronic objector, do not waste any time or turn out of your way to go and see him. You can find him right there in the same place any time during your life and you can see him at your leisure. He won't go away. In this manner did Mr. Holliday impart useful information to his little son on their journeys and Rollo, being very attentive and eager to acquire knowledge, never forgot anything which he remembered. He now interrupted his father to say, We are coming to the railroad crossing. I am very glad that you are so observing, my son, said Mr. Holliday. Your great-uncle Winthrop Emerson Beans lost his life at such a crossing as this by reason of his studious and abstracted habit of mind. He was a graduate of the Universal University of all Universal Universities, having completed the entire course of four years in one summer by correspondence, receiving a diploma which cost him fifty dollars including the frame. This gave him a hunger for intellectual pablum which he could not satisfy. One summer morning he was driving to the city with a jag of wood when approaching a railway crossing he observed a new sign in position. During his team midway on the rails where he could get a good view, he began to read after his own deliberate and painstaking method, R-A-I-L Rail, R-O-A-D Railroad, C-R-O-S Cross, S-I-N-G Crossing, Railroad Crossing, L-O-K-O-K, Railroad Crossing, O-U-T Out, Railroad Crossing, F-O-R-Four, Railroad Crossing, L-O-K-O-T-H-E-The, Railroad Crossing, L-O-K-O-T-Four-The. And just then the limited express came thundering along and filled the air with buckles and bits of harness and horseshoes and pieces of wagon and fragments of wood and the greater portion of your great-uncle Winthrop. He lived only long enough after his return to earth to say that he would die happy if he only knew what it was he was to look out for. One should be very careful then, said R-A-L-O, when crossing the railroad tracks. It is not a railroad, replied his father, it is a railway. What you call the tracks are not the tracks, but the line. And the rails are not the rails, but the metals. The yard engine is a shifting engine. The switch is a siding. We do not switch cars, we shunt them. The conductor is not the conductor, but the guard. The engineer is the driver. The fireman is the stoker. The ties are sleepers. The passenger car is a coach. The baggage is the luggage van, and the baggage checks are the brothels. But why are all these things other than what they are? asked R-A-L-O, because it is English, replied his father. But, said R-A-L-O, the hot and tots probably have names for these things still more foreign. Why not use the names they would give them? I presume it would answer quite as well, replied his father. Anything would be proper so it not be American. I merely wish you to avoid the vernacular of your native country. And one thing, said his father, in conclusion, wherever you go in your travels I beg you to remember. What is that? asked R-A-L-O. Remember the waiter, said his father, with a hollow loft. Spell and define. Tip, tip, tip. Tip, tip, tip. Tip, tip, tip. Which is the oldest railroad in the United States? And which is the worst? That is correct. And which is the meanest? Yes, that is correct. And which is, in all respects, the best? State how long, given the answer in years, you have had a pass over that road. Describe the habits of a railway hog. If a man habitually sits on a bench at home, eats pie with a knife and wipes his fingers on his hair, how many seats will he occupy in a railway car? A boy at home is 13 years old and weighs 108 pounds. How old will he be when his mother takes him out to Mahaha to see grandpa? Correct. And how does he lose the seven years? A baggage man weighing 210 pounds sits on a 90 pound trunk while he weighs it. How much is the excess baggage? End of section seven. Section eight of Chimes from Agester's Bells by Robert J. Burdett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Deborah Lynn. Chimes from Agester's Bells by Robert J. Burdett. Section eight, the story of Rallo. Seven, Learning Not To. One evening near the latter end of the same day of the week, Rallo came home from school a few hours behind time, but making good steam and running fast. He saw his mother standing under the honeysuckle vines that bowered the Piazza, but instead of hastening straight to her, as usual, he steered himself in the direction of the woodshed, expressing his intention as he passed Jane at the kitchen window of preparing enough kindling wood to last until the following Christmas. A boy never loses this disposition to be superfluously useful and voluntarily obliging after he has committed transgression until he has safely passed his ninety-second year. After that time, he is as liable to be self- assertive and impudent as a boy who has just broken a window is sure to be polite and respectful. His mother held him twice before he wanted to hear, but her voice came floating softly into his heart, and the little boy's habit of obedience asserted itself as he dropped the hatchet and slowly rounded to in quarantine. Rallo, dear, his mother said, how came you to be so late? A bit late, Rallo said, I run all the way from school as fast as I could. Didn't you see me run down the path? But his mother said, school closes at three o'clock, and it is now half past six. How does that come? Oh, yes, replied Rallo, rather too cheerfully for the occasion. I know now. Got kept in, missed my geography lesson. I think my little boy has missed a lesson, his mother said gently, but it wasn't in one of his school books. Why are you so late, Rallo? Where have you been since school closed? Oh, said Rallo, with an air of sudden recollection. I forgot. I had to go home with a sick boy. He pushed a bean up his nose so far he couldn't get it back again. Mighty sick. His folks think maybe he'll die. And Rallo looked very sad as he thought of it. His eyes were bent upon his bare feet as with prehensile toes he scraped a little fort in the dust of the path. It was a pathetic picture. The dying boy, with one barrel of his nose loaded with a single bean, slowly passing away from life with all its cares, its disappointing experiments in nasal agriculture, so often resulting in not but weariness of flesh and vexation of spirit. His weeping friends grouped about the bed, vainly imploring him to make one more effort to transform his nose into a catapult, firing a common pole bean. Masiolis vulgaris into space at short range. Small wonder that Rallo's heart sank as he reviewed the incident which never occurred. Rallo, his mother said without commenting upon the tragedy, your teacher was here an hour ago and said you had not been in school this afternoon. How did that happen, Rallo? Forgot, said Rallo, thought all the time it was Saturday. It was yesterday I got kept in. Rallo, said his mother, look at me. Didn't you go off with the boys and go in swimming this afternoon? Rallo tried hard to look at his mother, but all the beans that never went up, all the noses that never were seemed loaded upon his head. He couldn't tell what made it so heavy. Look into his mother's face, where there was nothing else in all this world of beauty at which he loved so well to look, but somehow his head would not come up. He added a strong bastion to the little fortress in the dust, as though it might strengthen his position. But he only said, Noam. And his voice sounded so strange and harsh that he looked around guiltily, as though half expecting to see Gubb Smoucher, the meanest boy in school, standing there saying it over his shoulder. Don't look down at your feet, Rallo, his mother said. And it seemed to him he never heard her speak so gently. Look into my face, just while you answer me. Weren't you down at the creek this afternoon? Rallo did try once more, but there was only one thing in the world that was heavier than the heavy head that hung upon his drooping shoulders. And that was the heart of a frightened boy beating like a great trip hammer, as though it would pound its way through the walls of his breast and show itself and all its thoughts and secrets in spite of the lying lips that were trying so hard to hide them. Rallo strengthened the redoubt a little and made the parapet higher before he answered, Nope, but your hair is all wet, my son, his mother said. Yes, I know, replied Rallo. That's sweat. Run so fast to get home on time. That's what made that. And your shirt is on wrong side out, said his mother. Yes, Rallo said, I know that. Put it on that way on purpose this morning for luck. Always win when you play keeps if your shirt is wrong side out. But one sleeve of your shirt is not on your arm at all, his mother said. And there was a knot tied in it. How did that happen? Why, Rallo said, Tobe Wilkerson done that when I wasn't looking. But what were you doing with your shirt off, Rallo? Rallo constructed a lunette in front of his fort very slowly, for his stronghold was being sorely pressed by the besiegers. By and by he said, I didn't have it off at all. Tobe just took and tied that knot in when I had it on. That's just what he done. And I didn't know it. He tied it in school. Deed and double he did. Tell the truth, Rallo, dear. Tell your mother. Rallo planned a subterranean way of escape from his beleaguered citadel, for it seemed to him the lines were being drawn very closely about him, and he feared the time for the final assault was not very far away. He made another effort to lift his face, but his glances were glued to the ground. His eyes were in the dust. Honest engine, ma, he did. Honor br— But somehow his voice, which started out brave and strong with honest engine, faltered and quavered away into a tremulous whisper when it tried to say honor bright. Like a good soldier forced into the enemy's uniform to fight under a flag he despises. His nervous toes hastily completed the line of retreat from a stronghold that was turning into a trap. My little boy, his mother said, very gently and softly. As she spoke, Rallo made one mighty struggle, and this time he did manage to lift his blue eyes until they looked into his mother's brown ones, straight as a ray of sunshine. And then he only saw her for just a little moment, for a great mist of tears came drifting between his eyes and her dear face like a fog bank coming up out of the sea, and that was all. Because now that he could not see her, though but a minute ago he wished he might not, the world seemed so big and lonely and dark to him, though just now he wanted some dark place in which to hide from her that he reached out his arms to see if she were still there. As he touched her, as he sprang forward and clung to her, he set his foot on the little fortress in the dust and crushed all his poor weak refuge of lies, its mean little hiding places, all its frail bomb-proofs, and its treacherous sally-ports into the dust of which it was building. He clung to her as though he would never, never let go of her again in all his life. His head had found its old pillow, never so soft and sweet and safe as now. Her arms were about his neck, hiding her little boy's face from everybody but herself. Even the rebellious little scalp-lock that he could never brush down looked pathetic as it drooped in its place like a dejected plume. She did not say much. Rallo's mother was one of those rare teachers who know when silence is the wisest and sweetest monitor and comforter in this garrulous old world. She led the little boy into the sitting-room and sat down with him nestled in her arms and sung the old cradle songs over him just as she used to do. And Rallo's crying grew fater until it last the broken sobs and the low singing blended softly together then ceased. The sun went down and the twilight came creeping silently into the room. When Rallo's father came home the lamps were not lighted. A great silver star hanging in the rosy west was looking in at the window and there in the twilight and starlight Rallo's mother sat rocking and the great big boy with the tear stains on his grimy face lay fast asleep in his mother's arms. And Mr. Holliday knew there had been trouble and good medicine for it so he stooped to kiss the little dusty face very gently and thought as he tiptoed out of the room that after all Rallo's mother was right when she said that men who had once been babies never got entirely over it but were babies a little bit when in pain or trouble all the days of their life but they don't have their mothers to go to all their lives and that's a good thing for a boy to remember before he forgets it. This wasn't the last time Rallo got into trouble because trouble is a plant that is indigenous to the soil of this planet so that it grows all the way along the road from the slaw of despond to the land of Bula on both sides of the path thick as alders on a trout brook tangled as dewberry vines and vicious as poison ivy so it happened that Rallo got into trouble once afterward and the next time and another time and the time after that and then again and all the other times and long after his old pillow had been taken away from his head when he had learned to go to another comforter often as trouble or sorrow came into his life he recalled that quiet evening in his old home with the daylight fading into twilight and the stars lighting the twilight out of the world he could hear her voice singing the cradle songs again and he loved to read in the book of consolation as one whom his mother comforted so will I comfort you so Rallo crying himself to sleep in his mother's arms was learning one of the hardest lessons in all this great kindergarten how not to spell and define erasure misfit counter march blot derailment effacement retrograde politics dissimulation construe facilist dissensus of Ernie what is the fare to Nevada which is easier for a flying machine to fly up or fly down and why why then is it so much easier to lay down a promissory note than to take it up give an example how long did it take Adam to get out of the Garden of Eden and how long has it taken his family to get back end of section eight section nine of chimes from a jester's bells by Robert J. Burdett this liberox recording is in the public domain recording by Debra Lynn chimes from a jester's bells by Robert J. Burdett section nine the story of Rallo eight Jonas sometime after the occurrences which happened previously mr. holiday came home from the village rather unexpectedly and walked around to the wood shed to see how Rallo was coming on with the tale of winter stovewood Rallo had some misgivings about this contract himself indeed when it was advertised to let he hesitated about putting in a bid on it and only was induced to do so by his father's arguments and by his promise to assist him in any serious crisis he said at any time when he perceived that Rallo was falling behind with the delivery of short sticks every Saturday evening he would call him up at five o'clock Monday morning and at four o'clock Tuesday and if he still failed to bring his contract up to the stated figure at three on Wednesday and so on he said he was not the man to stand around and let a boy lose money on a good contract by loss of time when he could just as well as not work him in a couple or three hours extra every day time is money concluded mr. holiday and many a boy loses a good job by not being around when his father wants him saying which mr. holiday went to the mirror and carefully examined his throat which was quite raw and inflamed having been overworked the preceding afternoon when he had called and shouted and yelled for rallo and thany from two o'clock till three to come to the barn and turn the grindstone a little while he put a razor edge on two axes a hatchet a weed scythe a couple of stalk cutters the butcher knife the bread knife a cradle blade the broad axe and a few chisels rallo and thany were down at the creek fishing at the time their father wanted boy power on the grindstone they heard the shouting but they thought it was their neighbor old mr. thistle pod drowning in the swimming hall they said they wanted to go to his assistance and would have done so gladly but for the fear that his bulldog turk thistle pod was with him and would tear them limb from limb they said they had observed that the dog was always untied when they went past the orchard consequently they supposed he was loose all the time frequently they had gone past the orchard at different times of the day and late in the evening sometimes as late as half past nine o'clock in the afternoon on purpose to see if the dog was shut up but no he was always tied loose always prowling about in a mean suspicious manner and always he growled in a threatening tone if they just stood on the lower rail of the fence to see more clearly they told their uncle george about it and he said they were persona non grotty with that dog and it better suspend all diplomatic relations with him the two boys felt very sad they said as they thought of old mr. thistle pod struggling in the treacherous element and slowly going down for the third time which would be out but they could not help remembering that the dog had always shown a most unreasonable antipathy to them and they feared it might be extremely difficult to overcome his prejudice at a moment's notice you couldn't rescue a drowning man rollo said and pacify an excited bulldog at the same time without more or less neglecting one branch of the business and beside then he had on his sunday pantaloons his others being in the shops getting a new dome put in so that whether he jumped into the water or the dog jumped into him the ruin of his best apparel was inevitable if they attempted a rescue rollo and then he were going to be very thoughtful boys their father said that sometimes he feared they thought too much and too far ahead in some matters but rollo said no he used to do that when he was younger but he had reformed because papa he said you may remember that on several occasions when you came home in the evening you called me into your study and said rollo what is this which i hear about you today and several times desiring to save the time and expense of a trial and being naturally frank with you i owned up at once and told you to the best of my ability what it was but now and then i owned up to the wrong thing something which you hadn't heard about and then i was in for two of them so that now you may have observed i never plead until i hear the indictment read rollo added that this was safer because you never could tell what was going to happen next in their family but then he said that didn't bother him so much as to be put in the witness box unexpectedly and then not be able to remember clearly what had happened last and as he said that rollo gave a sudden little gasp for he just remembered that mr. thislepods bulldog had bitten jonas last week and had gone into a decline the day following and before saturday night had died of inflammatory tuberculosis aggravated by symptoms of malignant strictinism in the other lung jonas was mr. holliday's hired boy one day the other summer when mr. holliday and rollo were out driving the horse cotton mather drifted so far to leeward pronounced lured and making a turn on the hill road that he broke a trace and began to back rapidly down the hill mr. holliday shouted whoa and rollo cried get up loudly and rapidly but cotton mather found it more agreeable to follow the wagon downhill and continued to do so with a steady acceleration of speed as they thus retrograded down the incline a boy sitting on a log at the roadside called out apparently to nobody get on to the trolley put a stone behind the wheel shouted mr. holliday for it was he for a nickel i will replied the boy politely he was poorly but not ostentatiously dressed and appeared to be very obliging mr. holliday said that he would give him a nickel as soon as the bank opened the boy then picked up a large fragment of glacial drift and chocked the hind wheel with it causing cotton mather to stop so abruptly that it stiffened his neck when they got out of the wagon to repair damages mr. holliday asked the boy if he had a bit of twine about his person the boy replied that he was long on string and drew from one of his pockets a coil of fish line a piece of manila rope several small clusters of binding twine a loop of picture wire a bunch of rubber bands a skein of black carpet thread a guitar string a spool of white cotton three leather shoe strings a couple of waxed ends with bristles on them and a small dog chain bid on anything you want governor said the boy respectfully mr. holliday kindly took the entire assortment saying thoughtfully that if he couldn't use all the outfit now it might come in handy some other time he also informed the boy that if he killed his pigs before christmas he would pay him next june if the weather held on and the roads kept up the boy took off his hat and thanked him saying that would suit him exactly and as he was in no hurry he would just go home with the gentleman and wait for it and in this way jonas for that was the boy's other name became mr. holliday's hired boy he was a very useful boy and taught rollo and thanny a great many things he was very obliging too and never considered it a hardship to quit work at any time on a hot day and go in swimming with the boys he had to go swimming he said for his paralysis it used to come on him while he was at work sometimes while weeding the garden he would be paralyzed in both legs and one arm then hearing rollo whistle over by the woods he would look up and see him on the fence holding up his right hand but the first and second fingers spread apart at this signal jonas would drop his hoe bound out of the garden like a rabbit jump over the fence like a deer run to beat nancy hanks for half a mile leap into the swimming hole and splash around in the healing water until it was time to make his toilet and go after the cows jonas's summer toilet consisted of three pieces a pair of overalls big enough to go around him twice a hickory shirt and one suspender of the same consequently he did not waste his time before the mirror he was very systematic for a hired boy and knew exactly how long it took him to make his toilet or unmake it when he went swimming it took him two and one half seconds to kick himself out of his wardrobe and about 15 to dress when he was called up in the morning it required 25 minutes for him to arrange the three pieces of his apparel properly this was his summer schedule in the winter time of course it took longer there are very few boys like jonas left in this world he was a boy of intense vitality with remarkable recuperative powers out in the field while raking after in oats harvest he would have sunstroke about 11 o'clock in the forenoon and stagger feebly to the house groping his way like a blind man not expecting to live until he could get into the shade of the porch but in about an hour when the horn blew for dinner he would be first at the table get help twice before the men could come in from the field keep up with them all the time they were eating and be ready to go out a field with them and have a stroke of paralysis at half past three in the afternoon paralysis and sunstroke were his summer afflictions in the winter he had heart failures when these attacks came on he fell from his seat in school and had to be sent home on a passing sled mr. holiday sent jonas to school three months every year he wanted to send him five but one teacher died and her successor struck so jonas went to fairview school three months in the year and learned more than all the rest of the boys did in six it was from jonas that mr. thislepods bulldog contracted the malady of which he died one evening jonas was walking past mr. thislepods orchard in the glomy he had a sack of seed corn on his shoulder and a pan full of lima beans in his hand he was whistling between his teeth in a peculiarly shrill and irritating manner when the dog ran up behind him and bit him in the bare leg jonas gave a mighty yell and let the sack of seed corn fall on the dog thus pinning him to the earth while the boy made his escape jonas went home put a chew of tobacco on the wound over which he tied a piece of ham rind some bruised plantain leaves and a maligned poultice and then made his will he did not however immediately give away any of the things of which he stood possessed greatly to the disappointment of rollo and thany jonas said he might not die for a great many years but when he did die it would be because of that bite the third morning after the biting however word came to the holiday place that the bulldog had gone into a decline he must have gone into it during the night because in the morning when the family at thisle pod terrace first noticed him he was lying on his back quite unconscious his legs were sticking straight up in the air and his body was swollen to about five times its normal size this jonas said was a sure sign of lung disease when they took the dog's temperature it was as near as they could estimate about 42 degrees below zero then they gave up all hope especially when the anemometer indicated that his respiration was merely nominal there was no formal announcement made of the dog's disease old mr thisle pod simply sending word to jonas that if he ever caught him anywhere on his farm he would break every bone in his lazy carcass when this was told jonas he explained to rollo and thany that it was because old mr thisle pod feared that jonas would go mad and bite him if he went anywhere night where he had himself been bitten the night after turks demise thany was very ill with cholera morbis and the doctor who was sent for at two o'clock in the morning said it was too early in the summer for him to eat so many apples they looked nice he said but they were not sufficiently ripe to eat in quantities of one half pack and upwards than he said he had eaten but two and they were small ones very mellow and quite ripe with all the seeds jet black but dr. good pill said he had doctored voice long before thany's father was born and in the course of his practice had probably prescribed for 284 thousand cases of cholera morbis hence he always made his diagnosis without any reference to the statements of the patient so saying he gave thany a dose which made him which he had eaten one more apple and died in the orchard spell and defined prudence dogwood bark meathound miscellany jimberjawed hydrophobal phobia dude gallus job a boy 11 years old and three feet and five inches in height has a trousers pocket 18 inches in circumference and four feet deep how long will it take him to fill it give an example where would he put his other things are dogs fond of green apples and is this why they are so often found prowling about their owners orchards yes and which would you rather prefer a bite of hard gnarly green apple or a bite of dog and why draw on the board a diagram of a boy spending a june afternoon in an october orchard before and after name one what not infrequently happens to a dog when he bites the wrong boy end of section nine