Chapter V: Part 5

You trained your grim weapon upon the region of the hole. You allowed Hen to have a squint adown the trusty, and rusty, barrel.

“Gee! I bet that’ll pepper him!” commended Hen; and laying aside his flasks he equipped himself with a rock in each hand, for aiding in the proposed job.

Very peaceful and cozy was it there, against the fence, with Indian Summer (in retrospect, those falls were all Indian Summer) around you, the warm sun shining upon you, and the warm grass and pungent weeds an elastic cushion underneath. It was an agreeable change, to surrender your gun to the fence, and relax.

“Sh!” whispered Hen, angrily, when you sought to straighten a leg.

“I don’t believe he’s comin’ out,” you whispered back.

“Yes, he will,” averred Hen.

“Maybe he doesn’t stay there any more,” you hazarded anxiously.

“Course he does!”

“Maybe he’s gone to sleep for the winter, though.”

“Sh! Shut up! He won’t come out as long as you’re talkin’!”

You subsided, and with cheekbone glued to the gunstock, and eyes ferociously glaring along the barrel, at the hole beyond, you expectantly bided the first rash movement on the part of Mr. ’Chuck.

In the meantime, what of that woodchuck? Lured afield by the pleasant weather, from his predatory tour he was leisurely returning—halting now to nuzzle amidst the stubble, now to scratch—for a mid-day nap within his subterrene retreat. He waddled into a dried ditch and out again, slipped through his private wicket in a boundary hedge, and gradually working up the slope was approaching his home, on the side opposite to your rail fence, when Hen, suddenly espying him, was astounded into the yelp: “There he is! Shoot! Shoot!”

Startled into immobility, the woodchuck stared about with quivering whiskers and bulging eyes. Boys!

As in a dream, you vaguely saw a squat, furry shape, a cleft, vibrant nose and two broad, yellow teeth; and with the remembrance that your gun was pointing in the general direction of this combination, you desperately tugged at the trigger. Your sole thought was to “shoot, shoot,” the quicker the better. The report was the thing.

But no report came. The trigger would not budge.

“Darn it! You old fool, you! You ain’t got it cocked!” shrieked Hen, grabbing at your weapon.

With a whistle of decision the woodchuck bolted for sanctuary. He clawed, he slid, he sprawled, all at once. Hen frenziedly delivered both rocks. The ’chuck, at the mouth of his burrow, in a second more would have swung on the pivot of his four short, stout little legs and have whisked in like a brindled streak, when, having succeeded in cocking your piece, you blindly let go—bang!

The butt slammed you under the chin, knocking your teeth together upon your lower lip. You noted it not.

“We got him! We got him!”

Thus Hen, tumbling over the rail fence, was wildly bellowing—with a pardonable extension of the subject pronoun.

“Hurrah!”

You were on your feet in a twinkling, and were dashing in the wake of Hen, up the incline, midway of which, just below the stump, on his side lay the woodchuck, limp and still.

Hen circumspectly reached and stirred him with the tip of a toe; then, emboldened into the attitude of Victor, recklessly kicked him.

“He’s dead!”

“Je-rusalem! I should say he was!” you agreed, poking the inert mass. “Wasn’t that a dandy shot, though?”

“You bet!” praised Hen.

And so it was—considering the attendant circumstances.

Gloatingly you and Hen examined your prize, inch by inch, investigating him from his two front teeth to his scraggly tail. Most of all did you gloat upon the blood, striking proof of your valor, and ere you had finished you well-nigh could have drawn a diagram of the shot holes.

’Twas established that the aim had been perfect (yourself demonstrating to Hen precisely what had been your course of action), that the gun had shot tremendously, and that the woodchuck was a very prodigy of size and strength.

Poor ’chuck! He had made his last foray, long enough had he dared to live, and now, despite his cunning, he had fallen to a boy who shut both eyes before firing.

Homeward, is it? Certainly! Nothing is left to be gained on the trail. With the stride of conquerors, you and Hen march through the village—you with gun and ammunition flasks, Hen with the woodchuck, which he has appropriated, dangling by the tail.

“Well, well! Where did you get that fellow?” query the men.

“Oh, John and me shot him,” explains Hen.

“Crickety, but ain’t he a big one! How’d you get him?” query the boys.

“We shot him! And he was runnin’, too!” boasts Hen.

“Aw, you found him!”

“Didn’t neither—did we, John? You come here and I’ll show you the shot holes in him!”

So, side by side, you and Hen gallantly stepped, with the visible tokens of your calling, homeward bound. At the entrance to your alley, however, Hen inclined to lag; and as the back yard was being traversed he fell further behind. Your own pace was slower and less confident, now.

Hen flung you the woodchuck.

“I’ve got to go,” he maintained. “You can take him.”

The back door opened, and mother stood and gazed upon you, even as Hen was discreetly retiring.

“John!” she said. “What have you been doing?”

Beneath its powder grime your face paled. At once you began to realize how your lip was puffing, and how your shoulder was aching.

“We were huntin’ woodchucks,” you quavered.

“The idea!” said mother.

“We got one, too,” you offered, in piteous defense.

“Mercy!” exclaimed mother, at the sight. “Leave it right there, and come straight into the house!”

“Ya-a-a!” bantered Hen, gleefully, from the other side of the fence. “You’re goin’ to ketch it!”

Here the door closed behind you, shutting you in with your shame.

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A BOY’S LOVES

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A BOY’S LOVES

IN the utmost beginning of things—in that time when roosters were very large, and geese were very fierce, and only mother could avert the thousand perils, heal the thousand wounds—existed a mythical partner established in family annals as “Your Little Sweetheart.”

“Annie? Don’t you remember Annie! Why, she was Your Little Sweetheart. You used to play together day in and day out. It was so cute to see you!”

But no. You may catch here a bit of blue ribbon, there an echo of a laugh, yet, try as you will, you may not recall her. Evidently when Your Little Sweetheart Annie was put away along with dresses and curls, she was put away so far that she was lost forever.

What space of months, or of years, elapses, you cannot tell. Nevertheless, suddenly you do witness yourself, still of age most immature, (you recollect that somewhere in this period you were miserably spelled down on “fish”), laying votive offerings upon the desk of your First Love, a girl with brown eyes and rounded, rosy cheeks.

These offerings are in the shape of bright pearl buttons and carnelian pebbles. The transfer requires much breathless daring. Down the aisle of the school-room you march, your gift tightly clutched in your hand, which swings carelessly by your side. Past her seat you scuttle, and, without a single glance, you leave the treasure upon the oaken top, beneath her eyes. Away you hurry, affrighted, ashamed, apprehensive, but hopeful. Presently, blushing, from your seat you steal a look across at her. She smiles roguishly. The offering is gone. It is accepted; for she holds it up that you may see. And you grin back, as red as a beet, while your heart, exultant, goes thumpity, thumpity, thumpity.

In company with another boy, who must have been a rival, you descry yourself hanging about her gate, turning somersaults, wrestling, and performing all kinds of monkey-shines, in the brazen fancy that she may be peeking out of a window and admiring you. She is framed, for an instant, by the pane. You and he scamper up and deposit in plain view—you upon the right gate-post, he upon the left—a handful apiece of hazelnuts. Then the pair of you withdraw to a discreet distance and wait. Out she trips, and gathers in your handful; but his she disdainfully sweeps off upon the ground.

He whooped in contempt and swaggered in derision; and you—you—what was it you did? Alas! the picture is cut here abruptly, as by a knife; the First Love vanishes, and the Second Love succeeds.

She is the minister’s daughter, a gentle, winsome little lass, not at all like the saucebox of the brown eyes and the rich cheeks. In the case of this Second Love there seems to have been no studied wooing, no sheepish bribery by pearl buttons and carnelians and nuts. You fall in with each other as a matter of course. In playing drop-the-handkerchief you nearly always favor her, and she you; and when either favors some one else the understanding between you is perfect that this is done merely for the sake of appearances.

Your mutual affection is of the telepathic order. Others in the party may romp and squeal and shout in the moonlight, but you and she sit together on the wheelbarrow, and look on in tolerant, eloquent silence.

In games you have occasionally kissed just the tip of her ear, and that was sufficient. Teasing companions may cry: “Aw, kiss her! Fraidie! fraidie! _That_ ain’t kissin’!” But you know _she_ knows, and smacks—those boisterous smacks current in the realm—are superfluous.

In addition to the kissing games, and the state of exaltation upon the wheelbarrow, you are able to conjure up yourself in another rôle: at the frozen river’s edge, strapping on her skates—your first remembered gallantry.

Assailed by the shrill scoffings of your rude comrades, under the refining influence of love you kneel before her as she is struggling with a stiff buckle. Like to the manner born, she permits you to assist. Then—then you skated, you and she, for each other’s sake enduring all the pursuing gibes? This point is not clear. You may not further linger with her, the minister’s daughter, your Second Love, for in a hop, skip, and jump you are worshiping at the skirts of the Third Love.

Her eyes are black—large and black. You are desperately smitten. You live, move, and have your being in a very ecstasy of fervor.

Her name is Lillian. Somewhere, somehow, you have run upon the lines of Tennyson:

“Airy, fairy Lilian,
Flitting, fairy Lilian,
When I ask her if she love me,
Clasps her tiny hands above me;
· · · · · · · · · ·
She’ll not tell me if she love me,
Cruel little Lilian.”

They appeal to you. They touch a spot which seems not to be reached by even Oliver Optic or “The Gorilla Hunters.” You _must_ have poetry, and you memorize them, and repeat them over and over to yourself, regardless of the fact that she, your inspiration, is neither airy, fairy, nor flitting, but of substantial, buxom proportions.

The Third Love, with her bold black eyes and her generous plumpness, is not so submissive as was that gentle Second Love. She flouts you. When the mood is upon her, she makes faces at you. At a party, when you stammer:

“The stars are shining bright;
May I see you home to-night?”

as like as not she turns up her nose, or else she tosses her head and snaps ungraciously: “Oh, I s’pose so!”

You never are sure of her; yet always you find yourself meekly at her apron-strings.

You willingly go to church (you conceive that your family does not know why, but in this you are much mistaken), because she sits in front of you. What a blissful, comfortable feeling you have, with her safely installed near at hand, twitching her short braids not more than three feet before your happy nose!

When the pew is filled to overflowing, then, sometimes, you are crowded out into her pew. Embarrassed of mien, you decorously slide into your new location, she receiving your presence with a shrug and a sniff, and you growing redder and redder as you imagine that all the congregation must be reading your secret.

In a moment she darts at you a sly glance (the coquette! How vastly superior she is to you in the wiles of love!), and you swell and swell, until it seems to you that you are towering into the raftered heights above.

And at the conspicuousness thus entailed you blush yet deeper.

Ah, her folks are about to leave town; she is to move away! The news comes with sickening directness, and on top of the announcement she pitilessly asserts that she is glad. You muster courage to declare that you are “going to write.” She flirts her bangs, and retorts grudgingly: “_I_ don’t care.”

Which is all the good-by that you get.

Beyond childish notes, you never have written to a girl; and what a bothersome time this first letter gives you! The chief trouble lies in the start. “Dear Friend,” which appears to be the address sanctioned by society, is too common-place and formal; “Dear Lillian” may err in the other direction, she is ridiculously touchy. You want something unique, and in your researches you encounter “Chérie”—where, history reveals not.

“Chérie” sounds nice; you do not know what it means, but all the better, for consequently it is finely ambiguous; and, proud of your originality, you take it. Once started, you occupy four pages, in your scrawling script, with what you deem to be clever badinage. Badinage is the main conversational stock in trade of girl-and-boy days.

Principally you rail her about a certain youth of your town with whom she used, to your torment, to run races. You hope that she will reply in a manner to convey that really she despised that other chap and is longing for you.

Two weeks of waiting. Then, one noon, your father, with an arch remark, fishes from an inside pocket a little square envelope, and passes it to you, at the dinner-table. The dinner-table, of all public places!

You endeavor calmly to receive it with a cursory glance; but you deposit it in your jacket well aware that your trembling frame emanates confusion.

Having bolted your dinner, you retire to the barn loft to revel in the missive. The double sheet of miniature stationery has a rosebud imprinted at the top.

Alas! underneath are the thorns.

FRIEND WILL: No, I don’t have George Brown to run races with any
more, but I have somebody lots better, and we run races every night.
Don’t you wish you knew who it was, smartie?

Even yet the lines rankle. They but indicate the tenor of the whole letter—a letter from which you failed, no matter how earnestly you pored over it, to obtain one grain of comfort.

You try her again, with another clumsy essay at wit. Answer never comes, and for a while you sneak about afraid that the truth will leak out, and you be made a butt by your schoolmates.

The queen is dead! Live the queen! This Fourth Love is a “new girl,” a stranger who one morn dawns upon your vision in the school-room. She is an adorable creature, with blue eyes, golden hair, and a bridling air that challenges your attention. With joy you learn, at home, that your folks know her folks; and when your mother proposes that you go with her to make a friendly call, so that “the little girl won’t get lonesome for want of acquaintances,” you accede unhesitatingly.

You are presented at court, and, sitting with her upon the sofa, do your best to be entertaining while the elders chat about “help” and church. You grasp, from her sprightly remarks, that she is well accustomed to boy admirers. She speaks of her “fellow”! She writes to him! He “felt awful bad” to have her leave! Beside hers, your experience in the ways of the world—particularly boy-ways and girl-ways, mingled—appears pitifully meager, and beneath her assertions and giggling sallies you are ofttimes ill at ease.

Impressed with her value, you depart, escorting your mother; and that night, before you go to sleep, you firmly resolve to win this girl or perish.

The Fourth Love resolves into a sad thing of mawkish sentiment. You are not given to mooning or spooning. You are too healthy. Drop-the-handkerchief, clap-in and clap-out, post-office—these tumultuous kissing games, open and aboveboard, are the alpha and omega of the caresses in your set. However, the new girl instils another element, hitherto foreign to the social intercourse.

To-day you recall, with great vividness, that winter evening before supper, when you lingered, on your way home, in the front hall at her house, planning with her to go skating.

“Oh, isn’t it dark!” she piped suddenly. “I can’t see you at all.”

“And I can’t see you, either,” you responded.

Silence.

“Where are you?” she whispered.

“Oh, I’m here by the door. Are you ’fraid?” you bantered innocently.

Silence.

“S’posing you kissed me! Wouldn’t that be awful!” she tittered in pretended horror.

But you—you summoned your chivalry, and went forth secure in the knowledge that you had not taken advantage of her helplessness.

This was the end. From that evening dated her coldness. Another boy jumped in and supplanted you. You encountered them together, and they looked upon you and laughed. He informed you that she said you “hadn’t any sense.” You sent back a counter-accusation, which he gladly reported. But enough; away with this Eve. What becomes of her you are able to decipher not. Let us consider the Fifth Love.

Her you acquire deliberately, with purpose aforethought, so to speak. A love is now absolutely necessary to you, and casting about, you hit upon the girl across the street. You have known her virtually all your life. She is not very pretty; she is just a plain, jolly, wholesome lassie, who is continually running over to your house, and with whom you are as free as with your own sister; but she will do.

Forthwith you begin a campaign. You walk home with her; you lend her books; you take her riding—a real, ceremonious ride, and not, as formerly, merely a lift down-town; you strive as hard as you can to enthuse over her and remark beauties in her. And she, meantime a little flustered and astonished at your unwonted assiduousness, accepts your crafty attentions and frankly confides to your sister that she wishes _she_ had a brother.

Unsuspicious girl! She treats you with a camaraderie which should warn you, but which only proves your undoing.

Mindful of the lesson gained at the hands of the Fourth Love, she the sentimental, you resolve that you will not be classed, in this present instance, as having “no sense.” Accordingly, one evening, upon parting with the Fifth Love at her gate, you baldly propose—well, you blurt awkwardly:

“Let’s kiss good night.”

With what scorn she spurns the suggestion! Then, while your ears are afire and you hang your head, she administers a severe, virtuous lecture upon the impropriety of an act such as you mention.

“But lots of boys and girls do it,” you hazard.

She does not believe you; and, anyway, _she_ never would. And she packs you home. You trudge across the street, angry, irritated, abashed, uncertain as to whether she was hoaxing you or whether she was sincere.

Girls are the _darndest_ creatures!

Evidently here closes the episode of the Fifth Love. It was but natural that thereafter you should be rather disconcerted when in her presence; and although she might act as if nothing had happened, _you_ (plagued unmercifully by your sister) could not forget.

And the Sixth Love? Yes, she followed, with scarce a decent interval, hard upon the exit of the all too high-minded Fifth. Maybe it was in a spirit of pique that you sought her. Whatever the preliminary circumstance, regard yourself eventually head over heels again, immersed in the current of a passion equaled only by your affair with that Third Love—“cruel little Lilian.”

This Sixth Love, too, has black eyes and an engaging plumpness. Black eyes, apparently, are the eyes most fatal to you. For the Sixth Love you would unflinchingly die, if life without her were the alternative; and you picture to yourself the manner in which she would mourn (you hope) when you are lying cold and still, with just your white face showing, in the family parlor.

No matter how circuitous it makes your route, going and coming you always manage to pass her house.

You wonder if she is proud of you because you can throw a curve. You would like to have her see that you are strong, and skilled in all the exercises to which boys are heir. You want to be her ideal, her knight. Some times you suspect that she does not thoroughly appreciate your prowess and good points, for she prates of other boys who do so and so, whereas you can easily do as much and more.

Now, whether or not it was due to the snake-curves (every boy is positive, soon or late, that he can throw a snake-curve), looking back you behold yourself possessed at last of this maiden of your choice. Of course no word of love has been uttered between you. That would be too silly and theatrical, almost morbid; furthermore, it is unnecessary. She has shyly confessed to you that she “likes” you, and this is sufficient. You generously refrain from urging her beyond this maiden admission.

Aye, ’tis distance lends enchantment to the view! You have been so accustomed to the excitement of the chase that with idleness you wax restive. The Sixth Love verges upon being a nuisance. Her black eyes, beaming for you alone, pall upon you. You grow callous toward her. You tire of always having her choose you at parties; you tire of her eternal assumption of proprietorship over you; you wish that she would not come so much to see your sister, and thrust herself upon you in your home.

And you set out to shake her off; you skip by the back door as she enters by the front; you avoid her at parties; you show her, in a dozen ways, that you do not fancy her any more.

Poor anxious, forsaken Sixth Love! It is she who turns the wooer; it is she who passes and repasses _your_ house; it is she who haunts _your_ steps, hoping that she may catch a glimpse of you. Regardless of the fact that you yourself so often have played this game, you remain obdurate. Finally pride rises to her rescue, and she sends notice that she “hates you.”

“Pooh! Who cares!” you sniff, with a curl of the lip.

Thus lapses behind you the Sixth Love; and although you have a faint vision of her parading, to meet your eyes, your most despised enemy, whom, in bravado, she had immediately adopted, memory indicates that you were unaffected by the sight, save to sneer, and that already the Seventh Love was engrossing your attention.

For there was a Seventh Love, and an Eighth, and more besides, to constitute a long train of wee, innocent heart-troubles as evanescent as a dream, but at their time just as real; until from this series of shallow, dancing ripples of Boy’s Love, lo! one day you suddenly emerged upon the deep ocean of Man’s Love, and anchored in the quiet haven where She awaited—She, the gracious embodiment of the best in these her girlish predecessors.

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NOON

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NOON

AFTER all, it is no fun posing at being a man. It is not, as you would inform the other boys, the pleasant sinecure that it is currently presumed to be, amongst your kind. The picture has more depth than appears at the distance. As you approach, you note only the surface tints; but when you have arrived, then begin to unfold aspects previously quite unsuspected.

So now, having had experience, you fain would turn back, and doffing for all time those starchy, heavy, strait-jacket garments which you have mistakenly donned, you would resume the free-and-easy blouse and knickerbockers and tattered brim, and would rejoin your gay brethren of school and vacation. You have learned your lesson, and you will leave them no more.

So be it. But alas, unavailingly you stop on your way down-town, beside the vacant lot where the other boys are playing ball, and look wistfully in upon them. None yells:

“Come on, Jocko. You’re tenth fielder.”

Once the ball rolls your way. You toss it back—toss it awkwardly, somehow, proving that you are out of practice. However, you can limber up right speedily. You have been away, they should know.

“Aw, you’re out! You’re out! You are too! Ask that man. He’s out, ain’t he, Mister?”

You wait for “that man,” wherever he may be, to reply. But you yourself are the sole spectator, and you gaze right and left, puzzled.

“He’s out—ain’t he!”

_You!_ It is you to whom they are appealing! You nod, confusedly.

“Ya-a-a! The man says you’re out!”

The man! The word gives you a little shock. They are styling you “man”! A sensation of disappointment and surprise sweeps through you; here you are, Rip Van Winkle, whom nobody knows. If only these your former cronies might see through and recognize what lies behind this thin disguise, they would realize that you really are but ten, and one of them.

All in the broad sun the other boys are “goin’ fishin’.” It is a prime day. Your being tingles for the poise of the trusty old pole upon your shoulder, and the feel of the fat bait-can in your jacket pocket. Hang business! You repudiate its tyranny. That “engagement” may importune, in vain. The perch are running, the kids are “all catchin’ ’em,” “fishin’” is “dandy.” Hurrah! The old-time _wanderlust_ is stirring in your veins. You will go. But—something holds you back. It will not be much fun to fish alone. Something tells you that even though you “fire” your shoes and stockings and strip to shirt and trousers, and boldly enter the fray, still will you be an alien, and looked upon askance. You are a “man,” and perch and bullheads are not for the likes of you.

Nevertheless, you can try. There hastens Hen—or, at least, one who might be Hen—pattering down the street, all accoutered for the ranks of joy and rivalry.

“Goin’ fishin’?” you demand bluffly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Sir!” In a word has he relegated you to your place. He knows you—knows that you have no fish-worms in your pocket, and that to match his mighty pole you have only a paltry jointed “rod.”

He pauses impatiently. He has little time to waste with you.

“Any good?”

“Yes, sir.”

Irksomely respectful, now with a wriggle he is off, onward into his magic realms, leaving you to gaze after, chastened, chagrined.

Oh, this hideous disguise—this iron metamorphosis which wizard Time, the inexorable, has laid upon you! There is no dropping it.

You turn to Nature; surely Nature has the acumen to recognize that you have grown not at all, save, perhaps, in stature. But the sun burns, the rain wets, the snow chills—each uncompromising and austere. The pond that once stretched away like an ocean shrinks and shallows at your coming, till you can almost step from bank to bank; the once limitless wood, as wild and as romantic as the Carpathians, mischievously contracts so that you can see through from side to side; the highroad is dusty, and the paths refuse to lead, but are finished in a stride. Everything conspires to remind you that you are foreign, Brobdingnagian, a personage apart, and that too late have you faced about.

To the pleasures and to the favors that were you have forfeited the “Open, sesame!”

You may not reinstate yourself by the company that you keep, for the company of old—where is it? Vanished; changed, like yourself; resistlessly urged on and ever on by the current which there is no stemming. Hen is a “man”—he runs a grocery store. Billy Lunt is a “man”—and an M.D., to boot. “Fat” Day is a “man”—even an alderman. “Snoopie” Mitchell, aye, the independent, envied Snoopie, whom naught, you believed, could coerce, is a “man”—for sometimes you are whirled along behind his engine. They all seem to glory in their estate and its attributes. And to them, _you_ are a “man.”

Exists only one authority to support your quest of boyhood; only one heart, besides your own, which apparently would be glad to have you again in blouse and knickerbockers; and to her you are still a boy, with the freckles concealed, merely, by that pointed beard at which she gently rails even in her pride. Mother! You can depend upon mother, as of yore. She is no older, herself; she is the same. Mother never changes. You are no older, yourself; you are the same. Let the other boys call you “man” and say “sir”; let sun and rain and snow, and pond and wood and path, deny you their one-time hospitality. To all the world without you may be a “man,” but to mother you are her “boy.”

Yet Time, forsooth, wrests even this anchorage from you. Comes an hour when, confronted by the inevitable, helpless in its grip, unreconciled even in your resignation, you dully stand by a bedside and wait—wait—wait.

Suddenly the eyes open and look up into yours with understanding. The graying, wrinkled face faintly smiles.

“What a great big boy you are getting to be, Johnny,” she murmurs, in vague surprise.

That is all. She is gone, and with her departs your last hold upon the things that were. Your morning is passed forever. It is noon. You must turn away, irrevocably the man.

THE END

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THE POET
MISS KATE AND I

-------------------------------------------

BY
MARGARET P. MONTAGUE

Handsomely Decorated and Illustrated. Net, $1.50
Postage, 10 cents

It is impossible to convey the charm of this mountain tale with its
flashes of humor, its intimate touches of nature, and its delicate
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charming one in itself, but the book is one of the most attractive
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in rich color, the page decorations in green, and the numerous
illustrations, fit the book admirably.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

AND

THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH

-------------------------------------------

BY
CHARLES DICKENS

With Introduction and Illustrations in Color and Line, by George Alfred
Williams. 4to, $2.00

Mr. Williams is best known to the public as the artist of “Ten Boys from
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and women, and the abandonment of grotesque caricatures for the
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The book is printed in two colors, handsomely bound, and is the most
attractive edition of the popular Dickens Christmas Books which has
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THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO.

33-37 East 17th Street, New York

------------------------------------------------------------------------

● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

End of Project Gutenberg's When You Were a Boy, by Edwin Legrand Sabin