Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 September 1876 — One of the “ Fizzle” Family. [ARTICLE]

One of the “ Fizzle” Family.

There was once a very smart boy, whom, to begin with, we will call Little Fizzle. He was one of those wide-awake boys who poke their noses into almost everything they see, and think tlley know half as much again as all the rest of the world. He went to school very young, and his mother wanted to have him learn to read and write well before he did anything else; but lie preferred to study “geog’fry,” grammar, and ’rithmetic besides. As he was so very bright, he soon learned to write very badly-spelled words, and could tell you, in quite incorrect language, what a verb or an adverb was. If he was likely to say Michigan was “ bounded” by Connecticut, why, other boys of his age, it may be, never heard of either place. For, young as he was, you see, Little Fizzle had come to a point where he must choose between two ways. He could half learn a little about a great many things, or he could well learn all about a few tilings. He made up his mind he would do the first; and that’s toe way he went on, and grew into a big Fizzle. *

"When be wanted to read he never took one nice story and read it every word, but he skimmed over the easy parts of a doz- ' en, aud jumped them altogether in his mind. As soon as he owned a tool box he almost made a cart ? and began a fine table and finished a remarkably pretty rock-ing-chair, which tipped over instead of rocking. But then it was “so stupid” to spend time and trouble in making only one thing, and making it perfect. As he grew older people liked him, because he could talk about all things under the sun, and was really very entertaining if they did not want to get any genuine information. He was not worth a last year’s almanac to anybody who was after facts.

He thought, when he grew up, he would be a lawyer, but he began by studying medicine. By and by he knew more about physic than a lawyer needed to know, and not half enough about medicine for a doctor; then he had a smattering of other things. He painted big animals whose skins were colored veiy handsomely, hut whose legs were not shaped like any living beast’s. After awhile he began to wonder what ailed him that he failed in everything lie tried He grew poorer and poorer, while men who had been boys with him, boys who had worked like drudges over a few things, these grown up, became great men, rich men, famous doctors, lawyers and ministers, while he was a little Fizzle grown into a big Fizzle. Then folks began to sneer ana to snub him. Each year he grew poorer and more discouraged. At tyeenty he had thought himself a great genius; at forty he used to hang around a blacksmith’s shop and wish he had learned to shoe horses. At sixty he had fiven up all hopes of being a lawyer, a octor, or an artist, or a blacksmith, and he kept his soul and body together by cleaning old feather beds. Now, if any boy wants to know how to become such another big Fizzle, let him begin at once to be a litt’e one, to half learn everything he begins, to begin something new as soon as it gets hard to understand the last thing he undertook. Follow up such a scoure faithfully and he

will not fail of neglect, self-disgust, and a poverty wherein he may not even be able to find old feathers to clean.— Church Journal.