Observations and advice from an 1875 newspaper about life
(Transcribed from The Athens Post
Apr 2, 1875)
Some Short Observations
for Children
When a boy on a sled slides down hill on the snow and goes clear through a fence, that’s gravity; but when the sled has to go up the hill again, that’s the boy’s muscle which pulls it by a rope. Gravity only travels one way on a sled.
If you
stick a pin through a bumble-bee into the window-sill, it will buzz
on with its cheerful music all the same like it was out of doors over
a flower; but if you will pinch your small brother when he won’t mind
you, then, maybe, you had better take your hat and go out and split
some wood, or something, and whistle careless.
They
say there is a ‘lectricity in a cat’s back; but if you rub a strange
yellow one long enough to try to find it, maybe you had better let
the ‘lectricity went. Anyway, that’s my advice to children
If all
the forest trees would grow crooked and with hard knots in, then your
father would have to hire a man to split the wood; but there wouldn’t
be so many pine rafts to swim on the outside of in summer, and you
would have to carry in more coal in winter, and so it would be about
even.
When
you go off a fishing and bring home only a long string of small
chubs, if you ask your mother to let you cook ’em, there will be a
dreadful fuss. But when she has got company for tea, then I wish you
would please listen to hear her make a bigger fuss when your father
forgets to bring home a box of sardines. That’s a curious way.
The
best way for certain to find out if ice will bear you, is to coax a
bigger boy to go on first, and then lend him your skates when you
have got to go home before dark.
If Mr.
General George Washington did almost ruin a cheery tree with a sharp
hatchet, he had the sand to own it up to his father when he was a
small boy; but I would like to see some Louisville hair-pins nowadays
as would do it.
You can
go to the minstrels half-price for twenty-five cents, if you have got
the quarter, but there has been a brass band concert from Boston at
Public Library hall which it took fifty dollars to buy a ticket and
go in. Minstrels is good enough for me, and so I’d rather save up the
rest of the money, when I get it, and buy a steamboat and a circus.
A
school-teacher will always stick to it that water always runs down
hill; but then what is the reason that sugarwater will run up a tree?
It’s a
sure fact that if you feed a small black-and-tan pup on whisky he
won’t grow any bigger, because I tried with a spoon on my Coly, and
he’s dead.
When
you go to bed and dream tranquil that you have got a new pair of
boots with square box-toes and red tops, and then have to put on your
old shoes when you get up in the morning, it will disappoint you so
rough as to make you miserable and nearly sick.
A small
piece of round cork dipped in the black ink, with some horse-hair
legs in, and the whole business tied to a fine thread, is a good
enough dead spider to drop down quiet and easy before a boy’s nose
which is smaller than you and timid.
There
was a poet named Jim Johnson, but he’s dead, because they say that
poets most usually die when they’re small. When they had prayers one
morning in school, a mouse ran up the bell-rope and Jim made some
poetry so loud that the teacher heard him. This was the first verse:
“There
was a mouse in time of prayers,
Went
up a rope for want of stairs.”
Here
the teacher got mad and told him that she should trounce him a few if
he didn’t get off another verse, and so he said:
“Here
I stand afore Miss Blodget,
When
she strikes I’m going to dodge it.”
And so Jim got off with a whole skin and was thankful.
