Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1874 — Little Brothers. [ARTICLE]

Little Brothers.

No doubt it is a beautiful thing, in the abstract, to have some little brothers, just as most theories are beautiful, but when we come right down to actual life little brothers are a pest—to grownup sisters, we mean. They always know everything, and they obey the Scripture recommendation and let their light shine instead of hiding it under a bushel. What knowk edge they possess the world is welcome to. If sister Amanda powders or touches up her palloi- now.and then with rouge, little brother is well informed on the subject, and some day, w r hen her favorite beau is making her a call, little brother will be sure to tell him about it. If she has a high temper, not always under control, little brother will speak about it while the young clergyman of the parish is making his monthly visit, and while Amanda, with downcast eyes and a very solemn physiognomy generally, is listening to his talk of heavenly things. Little brother’s careless hands investigate the sacred precincts of the family clock, and put a stop to time in that house until the clock-maker is sent ior. Little brother leaves the bobolink’s cagedoor open so that the cat can eat the bird, and then he howls himself sick over the catastrophe, and escapes thereby the punishment his indignant mother would have inflicted. Illness is, to the small criminal, the saving principle which insanity is to the criminal of mature years. - ——•- — —— Little brother trifles with the gold-fish, and takes them out to see if they can run on the table; and he snips ofl the rosebuds and squeezes the geranium leaves to make them, as he says, smell like a wasp —and he lets Towser play with Amanda’s new hair switch, and he tells his particular friend, Jimmy, about it, and advises him to try it on some time with his sister’s chignon—it is such fun to see the fur fly. If papa and mamma have a little tiff, as most married people do now and then, little brother finds out all about it, and looks knowing, and sets his head on one side, and sagely observes that “ he hopes lie sha’n’t quarrel with his wife when he gets to be a man!” And when some dear female friend calls and tells mamma that her eyes look red and swollen, and asks her tenderly if she is sick, and she pleads headache, little brother will make haste to inform the visitor that “ it is no such thing! She’s been a-crying because pa wouldn’t give her the money to btfy a new velvet cloak and a set of china like Mrs. Baggs!”

It is little brother who puts the chickens in the cistern to see if he cannot turn them into ducks, and he pulls out the rooster’s tail to make a plume for his “ training cap.” He litters the floor with marbles and tops, he whittles on the parlor carpet, he leaves “cords” of spruce gum and molasses candy on the sofas; he puts pepper in Aunt Sally’s snuff-box, sticks pins in the pillows, always has a dirty face and sticky fingers, sits down on his sister’s new hat without noiicing it is there, and hides under the sofa when Edward is there, just to find out how folks court! And then he tells Jimmy all about it next day, and how Amanda kept telling Edward she’d certainly leave the room if he didn’t stop squeezing her so—but she never went a step away! she didn’t! Little brothers always let out all your makeshifts to your company. Through them your guests learn that your chicken pie was made out of an old hen, killed because she had done laying! That there are ants in the sugar, and that the table, is set with the best crockery. And if it happens, as it often does in this imperfect world, that your company are not thoroughly welcome, little brother will manage to let them know it before they leave, and you cannot prevent him. Yes, littjfe brothers are an undoubted pest, but a house is desolate and dull without them. —Kate Thorn, N. T. Weekly.