People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 January 1897 — A BOY AND AN ORANGE. [ARTICLE]

A BOY AND AN ORANGE.

Xaaarenoe Hatton Tells How He Succumbed to a Temptation In His Youth. The >boy was taught, from the earliest awakening of his reasoning powers, that •truth was to be told and to be respected and that nothing was more wioked or more nngentlemanly than a broken promise. He learned very early to do as he was told and not to do, under any consideration, what he had said he would not da Upon this last point he was strictly conscientious, although onoe, literally, he “beat about the bush.” His Aunt Margaret, always devoted to plants and to flowers, had, on the back stoop of his grandfather’s house, a little grove of orange and lemon trees in pots. Some one of these was usually in fruit or in flower, and the fruit to the boy was a great temptation. He was very fond of oranges, and it seemed i 6 him that a “homemade” orange, whioh he bad never tasted, must be much than a grocer’s orange, as oake was certainly preferable even to'®> the wonderful cakes made by the professional Mrs. Milderberger. He watched those little green oranges from day to day as they gradually grew big and yellow in the sun. He promised faithfully that he would not pick any, but he had a notion that some of them might drop off. He never shook the trees, = because he said he would not. Bnt he shook the Btoop, and he hung about the bush, whioh he was too honest to beat. One unnsually tempting orange, whioh \ he had known from its budhood, finally overcame him. He did not pick it off, he did not shake it off. He compromised with his conscience by lying flat on his back and biting off a piece of it. It was 1 not a very good action, nor was it a good orange, and for that reason, perhaps, he went home immediately and told on himself. .He told his mother. >He did not tell his Annt Margaret. His mother did not seem to be as mnoh shocked at his oonduot as he was. Bnt in her * own quaint way she gave him tb understand that promises were not made to be cracked any more than they were made to be broken—that he had been false to himself in heart, if not in deed, and that he must go back and make it “ all right” with hisAnnt Margaret. She did not seem to be very mnoh shocked either; he could not tell why. Bnt they punished the boy. They made him eat the rest of the orange. He lost all subsequent interest in tropical glade, and he has never oareftJk mnoh for domestic oranges sinoe.—‘‘Ay* Boy I Knew,” by Laurenoe Hutton, in St. Nicholas. S