Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1894 — JUVENILE DEPRAVITY. [ARTICLE]

JUVENILE DEPRAVITY.

The Bad Boy Planted Corn in His Sister’s Herbarium. ‘ ‘Seems to me I ain’t eVer goin’ to be able to sit down again with real solid comfort,” said the small boy as he lowered himself cautiously into a chair. ‘‘Ouch! There is some folks as can never take a joke nohow. Yer see, my mother ’n sister took it into their he’ds to start a herberryum—j guess that’s what they called it. At enny rate they got a big box and had it painted all up bright and then they filled it with dirt and planted seeds. ‘‘Well, I tho’t I’d put in a few seeds too. So I got an ear of corn and shelled it and planted six of the kernels in the herberryum. along with the other seeds. “Bynby, after the ferns and pansies and that sort of stuff had begun to grow, one day the six green shoots poked their way up thro’ the dirt, and when my sister she seen them- 1 — my! wasn’t she astonished! She was tickled, too, as could be, an’ she went an’ called mother to come and look. ‘‘Well, they wuz both so tickled that they used to watch them shoots every day and wonder what made them grow so fast. They was pleased, too, as anything, ( cause they said they must be something rare. Mother said it must be some queer kind of a fern, because it growed so, and sister she thought it was some kind of grass. “Well, when I seen that the shocts was a growin’ to look like cornstalks I began to get scared, ’cause I knew they couldn’t be pulled out without tearing up everything else in the box, and I knew that if they were left there to grow they would crowd everything out. So every time ma ’n sister went to look at ’em I just lit out.

“Well, a few nights ago we had a party, and ma was showing her herberryrum to everybody and was awful proud of it and wanted everybody to notice particularly the six splendid big grasses that neither she nor my sister had planted, an telling ’em all as how they must be some rare plants. “ I was a-feelin’ uneasy all the time, tho’ I tho’t I’d die a-lafiin. Bimeby ma she comes along with old Mr. Atkins, who owns a big farm out in Jersey, 'an she says to him that she hadn't planted them, neither sister nor she, and that they must be something uncommon. Old Mr. Atkins, he gave one look, and then he commenced to lass, and he sassed and lafled till he liked to dide. ‘ ‘ Ma got red in the face, too, an’ I could see she was mad as ennything. “ ‘Rare!’ sez old Mr. Atkins, as soon as he could speak. ‘Uncommon! You just cum over to Jersey to my farm next summer, ’ sez he, ‘and I’ll show you acres of them rare grasses. It’s corn,’ sez he, and then he nearly had a fit. ‘ ‘ Ma an’ sister were just crazy, and p’r’aps I didn’t catch it—oh, no! But the wurst of it was that it went all over the neighborhood how they had been growin’ corn in their herberryum, and when ma learned of that, why I caught it again. “But they had to pull the corn up and plant the herberryum over again, that’s one comfort,” and the small boy went and sat down in a snow bank and whistled shrilly.—[New York Herald.