Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 60, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1912 — WELL WORTH THE WHIPPING [ARTICLE]

WELL WORTH THE WHIPPING

Adventurous Small Boys Determined to Bee Cause of Commotion, and Had-Their Reward. ~ Ed HOW 6, the" great Kansas editor of Atchison Globe fame, tells the following story In the American Magazine: '-'7"''n7-'. “So Uttle that is really exciting or worth while has happened in my life that I am greatly interested in Jim and Dan Ayers, who run a restaurant in the town where I live. Something really happened to them once upon a time, and when I go to their restaurant I enjoy hearing them tell about it “When they were boys, they lived on a farm in Virginia; I have heard them say their post office was Sudley Springs. One Sunday morning their father started them to Sunday school, and after they had loitered along the way a mile or two Jim Ayers remarked a co'mmbtion over beyond what they called the Big Woods. ‘“What’s that?’ Jim asked, stopping. “It was getting late by this time, and Dan replied: “T don’t know, but we’d better hurry and get to Sunday school, or we’ll get ~a whipping.’ “Then they hurried on, but the commotion over beyond the Big Woods broke out again, faintly, but It was very "unusual, and Jim stopped and listened. He had never heard anythlnk like It before, although be was a big boy twelve years old and, listening a while, he said: . “‘l’m going over there.’ “ ‘Better not,’ Dan said. ‘You knowfather whips hard.’ “But the strange commotion continued, so Jim said he was going, whipping or no whipping. Dan followed, but kept saying they would catch It when they returned home. “They walked and walked .and walked; all the time the commotion over beyond the Big Woods became' more pronounced, but they couldn’t' tell what it was. They forded streams, and were chased by strange dogs, but kept on from ten o’clock in the morning until three o’clock in the afternoon. They had nothing to eat, and they didn’t know that they could ever find their way back, because they were in a country strange to them. But they kept on, and a little after { three o’clock, as a reward for their perseverance, they walked into the battle of Bull Run. I never before heard of boys going anywhere and finding anything as great as they expected.”