Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1884 — He Remembered. [ARTICLE]

He Remembered.

A man never feels more lonesome and forgotten anywhere on the face of this big earth than in the land of his boyhood, after an absence of fifteen or twenty years. He goes back with a sort of half belief that he will find everything just about as he left it, and is startled to see the little red-headed girl he was wont to help at her mudpie baking the mother of a growing family, and the cherry-tree of his childhood’s happy hour full of the sons of the boys he used to play with. About a year ago I went over into the happy land of my boyhood, where I was wont to chase the bright hours away hunting the amusing bumble-bee in his native lair. I had been away from the locality about eighteen years, and it was half a day’s work to find a person I could call by name. It seemed to me that everybody I knew when I was a boy and lived there had died or moved away. The cherry-tree I used to climb; the streams I used to dam for water-power to run miniature saw mills; the hills I used to coast upon; the great chestnut trees I used to shake till they showered down their nuts; the rocks among which I was accustomed to hunt the ferocious chipmunk were all there, looking very much as they had looked nearly a score years before; but the people had all changed.

Near the old house in which I was a happy boy, with a great longing for pie and a marked distaste for work between meals, I found a solitary whitehaired man leaning against a fence. He was apparently occupied by his thoughts and a large chew of tobacco. He was an old inhabitant. I had stolen watermelons from him twenty years before. I knew him at once. I recognized him by a strawberry mark on his nose. I thought I would question him and see if he remembered me, and, approaching him, I asked, in a kindly and reverential tone of voice: “My good sir, do you remember a fair, bright youth, with thoughtful, pious air, who was the joy and light of a family who lived in yonder house some eighteen or twenty years ago?” “No, I never knew any such boy in this section,” said the old inhabitant, slowly, and in a dry, husky tone of voice. “But I used to know a towheaded, freckled-faced youngster who lived over there about as long ago as you speak of. I can’t forget him well, for he was the worst boy in the community—a boy who was as frisky and chipper as could be when there was no work to do; but who always had a bad pain when there was water to be carried to the harvest hands, or firewood to be fetched in, or the cows to be hunted, or the grindstone to be turned; a boy who was always at work at a rabbit-trap, or a machine to hull wal-

nuts; or a saw mill, or something; a boy who had a dam across every run in this section, and a flutter-wheel a-go-ing at every dam. That’s the only boy I ever knew to live over there in that house on the hill.” I saw that he hadn’t entirely forgotten me. “What do vou suppose that boy is doing now ?” I asked. “I don’t know,” he answered, in a meditative wav; “but I expect he is in jail. He ought to be, any way, if he is still alive, and hasn’t reformed.” “No, he is not in jail,” I said, thinking I would surprise him; “he is the editor of a newspaper.” “Well,” answered the old inhabitant, slowly, after changing his quid from his left to his right cheek, “I ain’t a bit surprised to hear it. I always said he would oome to something bad.” At this point the conversation flagged, and a sort of coolness appeared to spring up between the old inhabitant and yours truly. I decided not to surprise him by revealing to him the fact that I had once been a boy and had lived in the house referred to. I was afraid the news might shock him, broke lit to him never so gently. He was a a very old man, and the shock might have been too much far him.— Scott Way, in Puck.