Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1887 — SOME MEASLE STORIES. [ARTICLE]

SOME MEASLE STORIES.

Philosopher Arp Comforts the Children with Thrilling Tales. [Bill Arp, in Atlanta Constitution.] The measles have come again—the measles and the meanest sort of mea- ' ales. Eight of the dock have long since graduated in all the infantile diseases and have their diplomas, and now Carl and Jessie are down and it takes lots of nursing, for they are real sick. They are tender-hearted now, very, and want their mother or me close by or in sight all the time. I sit between their two beds and tell them stories and have to hold a hand of each to keep them even. "When I lovingly fondle one I have to fondle the other, too, for they are jealous. The old stories have to be repeated. There is the beaver-dam story and the runaway nigger and the black pony and Tip from the Yankees and my school butter scrape and some others that* I have a patent on, and I have brought them all along down the corridors of time and cheered many a weary hour for our restless, eager children. Then I told these measly children about my going to Boston with mv father and mother and brother when I was only eight years old. How we took passage in a sail vessel from Savannah, and were out forty days at sea, and had awful storms, and at last were run into by another vessel in a fog as we neared the harbor, and how our own vessel went down, and the passengers all had to get aboard the other vessel, and how my mother would not consent to come home by sea, and my father had to buy a carriage and two black mares, and also bought a black pony for my brother and me to ride on, and how my father’s sister came home with us and Mr. Maltb e, who was his schoolmate, and so there were four in the carriage and two bo s on the pony, and we came all the wav to. Georgia and it took over two months, ■ind. we never crossed a railroad nor Daw one, for there was not one to cross, i ind how I had to ride behind most of ■he time, and one day as we saw some wild grapes tip in a vine over our heads, my brother got me to stand up on the pony’s back so as to reach them, and as I swung up to the vine he rode off and left me hanging there, and I got mad and cried and waited for the carriage to come up, and I told on him, yes I did, and they let me ride in the carriage until I got over my pouts. Then I told these measly children that my good father was dead and my dear mother was dead and my brother was dead, and so was my aunt and Mr. Maltbie and the two mares and the pony, and the carriage was worn out and gone, and I only was left. Then they put their measly arms around my old neck and kissed nje so lovingly that I was glad I was not dead. Mrs. Arp flies round all the day fixing up something. She makes them chicken soup, and tastes it and seasons - it and tastes it again, and she fixes up toast and gelatine, and she feels of their feet forty times a day to see if they are warm, and she doses them with onion juice, and she keeps a camphor flannel on their breasts to make their old measly cough easier, and she keeps the room dtrk to keep the light ’from hurting their measly eyes, and away in the night she is slipping and ■sliding around l.ke a ghost and putting her hand on their measly foreheads to see if they haven’t got fever or something. Such is life in this measly world, and we must take it as it comes, and be calm and serene, measles or no measles. She is reading old Kobinson Crusoe to them now, but by and by she will stop, and then they will be yelling for me. I thought that our crop was laid by, but it has got the measles, just like the cotton sometimes takes the rust.