A Plea for Old Cap Collier | Page 8

enjoyed the vogue
among parents and teachers that Mr. McGuffey enjoyed, but I'll say this
for him--he knew more about the laws of hydraulics than McGuffey
ever dreamed.
And there was Peter Hurdle, the ragged lad who engaged in a long but
tiresome conversation with the philanthropic and inquisitive Mr. Lenox,
during the course of which it developed that Peter didn't want anything.
When it came on to storm he got under a tree. When he was hungry he
ate a raw turnip. Raw turnips, it would appear, grew all the year round
in the fields of the favored land where Peter resided. If the chill winds
of autumn blew in through one of the holes in Peter's trousers they blew
right out again through another hole. And he didn't care to accept the
dime which Mr. Lenox in an excess of generosity offered him, because,
it seemed, he already had a dime. When it came to being plumb
contented there probably never was a soul on this earth that was the

equal of Master Hurdle. He even was satisfied with his name which I
would regard as the ultimate test.
Likewise, there was the case of Hugh Idle and Mr. Toil. Perhaps you
recall that moving story? Hugh tries to dodge work; wherever he goes
he finds Mr. Toil in one guise or another but always with the same
harsh voice and the same frowning eyes, bossing some job in a manner
which would cost him his boss-ship right off the reel in these times
when union labor is so touchy. And what is the moral to be drawn from
this narrative? I know that all my life I have been trying to get away
from work, feeling that I was intended for leisure, though never finding
time somehow to take it up seriously. But what was the use of trying to
discourage me from this agreeable idea back yonder in the formulative
period of my earlier years?
In Harper's Fourth Reader, edition of 1888, I found an article entitled
The Difference Between the Plants and Animals. It takes up several
pages and includes some of the fanciest language the senior Mr. Harper
could disinter from the Unabridged. In my own case--and I think I was
no more observant than the average urchin of my age--I can scarcely
remember a time when I could not readily determine certain basic
distinctions between such plants and such animals as a child is likely to
encounter in the temperate parts of North America.
While emerging from infancy some of my contemporaries may have
fallen into the error of the little boy who came into the house with a
haunted look in his eye and asked his mother if mulberries had six legs
apiece and ran round in the dust of the road, and when she told him that
such was not the case with mulberries he said: "Then, mother, I feel
that I have made a mistake."
To the best of my recollection, I never made this mistake, or at least if I
did I am sure I made no inquiry afterward which might tend further to
increase my doubts; and in any event I am sure that by the time I was
old enough to stumble over Mr. Harper's favorite big words I was old
enough to tell the difference between an ordinary animal--say, a house
cat--and any one of the commoner forms of plant life, such as, for
example, the scaly-bark hickory tree, practically at a glance. I'll add this
too: Nick Carter never wasted any of the golden moments which he and
I spent together in elucidating for me the radical points of difference
between the plants and the animals.

In the range of poetry selected by the compilers of the readers for my
especial benefit as I progressed onward from the primary class into the
grammar grades I find on examination of these earlier American
authorities an even greater array of chuckleheads than appear in the
prose divisions. I shall pass over the celebrated instance--as read by us
in class in a loud tone of voice and without halt for inflection or the
taking of breath--of the Turk who at midnight in his guarded tent was
dreaming of the hour when Greece her knees in suppliance bent would
tremble at his power. I remember how vaguely I used to wonder who it
was that was going to grease her knees and why she should feel called
upon to have them greased at all. Also, I shall pass over the instance of
Abou Ben Adhem, whose name led all the rest in the golden book in
which the angel was writing. Why shouldn't it have led all the rest? A
man whose front name begins with Ab, whose middle initial is