Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 September 1898 — SYMPATHIZED WITH HIM. [ARTICLE]

SYMPATHIZED WITH HIM.

Tbs Boy Didn’t Know That His Fathef Was After Him. The person who related this anecdote vouched for its truth, regardless of its near approach to a narratifs well known to history. Down on the south side lives a family of three. The boy is small, th* father is of slender construction, but the mother is ample and globular, and if the earth does not tremble when she treads it certainly shudders slightly. One day the boy, being caught redhanded in some misdeed, was directed by his mother to,go upstairs and prepare himself for a trouncing. The boy fled to the upper floor, but instead of waiting in patience for his bodybeating he took refuge under a bed. When the avenger came with sounds of heavy breathing to chastise him he refused to come out of his retreat. She bent and tried to pursue him to his corner, but it was like the effort of the camel to progress easily through the eye of the needle. The space between the bed and the floor was too narrow for the admission of the mother’s unsylphlike form. She pulled the bed out from the wall, but the boy was still too wily, and he followed under it. Then she pushed it over to another side of the room, hoping that it twould pass over him and leave him behind, but it did not. So in despair she returned to the lower floor to wait for the homecoming of the father of the flock. When the man of the house arrived the situation was explained to him, and he went up those stairs at a gallop. He did not wait for argument or persuasion, but, bending low, shot under the bed. The anxious mother followed him into the room, reaching the door when the husband was halt under. The culprit from beneath could see nothing, but he understood that his father was coming, and that his mother was a close second. “Here, dad! This way!” he cried. “It’s comfortabier here, and there ain’t no show or fief getting in after you.” And then in a free-masonry of crime: “What did you do, dad? What’s she tryin’ to get you for?” And he spoke with such honest consideration and such a desire to be helpful to a fellow-sufferer that the father hadn’t the heart to give him the hiding he had intended to administer.—Chicago Record.