Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1887 — BOB BURDETTE. [ARTICLE]

BOB BURDETTE.

P« Talk* of “The Fates and The Boy.” You know Pm not living where I do now? So, I moved away from my present abiding place and am qccnpying pie .sant apartments on the next btock. Yes, indeed. You see, "there was a boy at my former boarding house. He was a type of a, boy I most furiously dislike, and I seem to be the type of a mau he hates, for we declared war the first day we met He deployed his skirmishers as soon as he saw me, and I was waiting for him in the woods just over the top of the hill, thicker than liOir on a dog’s back. He was an impudent, loud-voiced, slangy cub, with a head of most luxuriant long bushy hair, that my fingers were always aching to get into. My room was on the first floor, and he used to* make faces in at my window. One day he thrust his head in, but I was laying for him, and as he opened his mouth to yell something offensive, I chucked it full of sawdust. That night he hung alive oat by the tail to my window shutter, and the vixen nearly scratched my eyes out before I could cut her down. It was Miss Giddigirl’s cat, too, and she believed I hung it there myself, and so did everybody else. Next day I maneuvered the boy In front of my window until, thinking I wasn’t looking, he fired a buckshot at me and I dodged and let it break a looking glass. His father thrashed him for it, and I was so pleased I paid for the mirror myself. Next day he bent a pin in my chair at the dinner table, and I nearly died rather than jump up and “holler.” He found out that it irritated me nearly, to madness to hear or see him, so he took to playing under mv window. I charged him out of that by emptying half a gallon of shaving water out of the window. He flanked me by moving just around the corner, where I could hear him but couldn’t reach him. When I sang he imitated me, but not well.' If I read aloud he drummed on the end of the house. Once I dissembled and won his confidence so far that he accepted an invitation to got to the creek with me. When I got him there, his suspicions were aroused and he refused to go into the boat. He knew very well I was going to drown him. But he didn’t say so. I knew it, too, though I didn’t* say so, either. So nothing was sa-'d about it, and I came home, bitter and heavy-hearted with disappointment. My sole desire now was to catch him in the dark and scalp him. Hut he was wary, and never went in the dark alone. I was just beginning to despair and to feel that my life was a failvfre, when one evening I heard him passing my window where I lay in ambush. I peeped out, and in the dim, misty starlight I just discerned my enemy’s figure passing out of reach. I threw my body far out over the window-sill, and stretching my arm, caught a handful of that hated hair. I had practiced' that clutch on' pillows and bolsters night after night with- vengeful industry. There was no slip to it. My fingers closed on the locks of my foe likd the grip of an octopus, and I gave a yank that would have pulled up a pine tree. The shrieks that split the air of the silent night fairly made my heart stand still, and I shrunk back within the gloom of niy room. Scream after scream, slamming doors, crashing windows, told the house was alarmed and wild with excitement. I must go out; it would not do to remain concealed. I brushed the clinging locks from my guilty fingers. Shrill voices were calling my name. Horrors! I was suspected, then ? Some one had seen me ? The boy had recognized my touch? I went out into the hall. What was the matter,? Well might I ask, they said, sitting there in my room, poring over my book while murder was being done. A gigantic tramp, they told me, hidden under the trees, had ( aught my sister by the hair and nearly broken her neck, and then ran away. I am going to slay that boy with my naked hands if I have to wait till the next war to get a chance at him.