People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1897 — A BOY AND AN ORANGE. [ARTICLE]

A BOY AND AN ORANGE.

Laurence Hutton Tells How He Succumbed to • 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 wicked or more ungentlemanly 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 once, 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 to him that a “homemade” orange, which he had never tasted, must be much better than a grocer’s orange, as homemade cake 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. But he shook the stoop, and he hung about the bush, which he was too honest to beat. One unusually tempting orange, which 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 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 Aunt Margaret.

His mother did not seem to be as much shocked at his conduct as he was. But in her own quaint way she gave him to 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 his Aunt Margaret. She did not seem to be very much shocked either; he could not tell Why. But they punished the boy. They made him eat the rest of the orange. He lost all subsequent interest in that tropical glade, and he has never cared much for domestic oranges since.—“A Boy I Knew,” by Laurence Hatton, in St. Nicholas. LI MIGHT BE EMPEROR? Discontented Masses In Southern China Ready to Make Him Their Ruler. Latest advices from China state that the new viceroy is bitterly hated by the masses. Large quantities of arms and ammunition are said to be pouring into the Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces through every available channel, and the viceroy is reported to be very uneasy because he has reason to believe that secret societies are very active throughout southern China. It appears, in fact, that there is every prospect of the masses rising in the southern provinces in the near future, and in such a determined manner that the insurrection will not be easily suppressed. It is a step like this that would lead to the overthrow of the present Chinese dynasty, and all that is needed is for Li Hung Chang to declare in their favor to lead to his being emperor of China.New York Journal.