Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1877 — How to Spend the Summer—Tommy Jones' Advice. [ARTICLE]

How to Spend the Summer—Tommy Jones' Advice.

Sometimes city boys don’t like to spend the summer at hotels, ’cause there’s so many people to make remarks about how they look and what a dirty face he has, of else frecfcles, and some girls, too. A good way for their mothers to do with them is to find a farm house where they don’t object to children, and ask the folks to take them to board. If you get the right place it’s splendid, for J know. The nicest way to go is in'a boat and then is a wagon; the cars are awful tiresome and thirsty. The farm house ought to have lots of rooms with queer things to look at and play with on rainy days, and the farmer better have: a gun or two to clean. The house I mean has a table all covered with pictures and then varnished ; and I don’t believe you could ever see them all, if you looked every wet day atl summer. Out doors you want a wood ; stone fences, with blackberry bushes and sumac and hazel nuts and wild grapes growing all over and through them; and a hush lot, with great big stones with holes under them —’most like caves—and some hollow trees. You want these to play Indian, and keep house in. Farmers don't like bush lots, but boys do; and so dosquirrels and birds and all your sisters. Nearly every trap yon set catches something, and once it was a skunk. He was dead, and we had a funeral that all the folks m the house came to. Such a long procession t And nobody was sorry, you know. And you must have a brook with stepping stones in it, and other stones, too, and a bridge over It. There are lots of fishes in such brooks—cricks the country people call them—and if you want to see them you can either ait quiet and wait or stand on a loose stone and rock it. :

You can walk down the brook on the stones till you come to the wood; and one boy I know used to tell stories about wild beasts all the way, and then, go into the wood) and roar like a Hon till all the little ones, standing on the stones, grew frightened and cried—almost. Then he came back and said, “ What’s the matter ? J ain’t ’fraid of tigers or anything. 1 Come along!” So we came back and sat under the bridge and ate some cake. That’s another thing; you don’t want folks who won’t let you have anything to eat between meals. The best waj is for them to have the butteary door on the outside and easy to open. Some countryladies know how to make a real nice kind of cake—solid; It tastes splendid sometimes. If the buttery-door slopes when it’s shut it is grand fun to slide down. I know one that shines like everything, and bus not one single splinter in it,. ,j Your mother don’t have a bit of trouble, ’cept to start yon clean in the morning and see your face, and bands are clean meal times, and you wear out all your old clothes. It’s splendid!

T. JOHES.

Yours truly, ’

—Chrittian Union. —Mexico has a Woman’s Bights, paper, edited by a fair creature euphoniously named Benora ltafaelo Arevala.