The Little City of Hope | Page 6

cut in his barn
door for the cat, and a little one next it for the kitten.
But Newton Overholt did not at all resemble his great namesake. He
was a practical young soul, and had not yet developed the American
disease which consists in thinking of two things at the same time. John
Henry had it badly, for he had been thinking of the tangent-balance, his
wife, his boy, and the coming Christmas, all together, since he had got

home, and the three problems had got mixed and had made his head
ache.
Nevertheless he looked up from his work-table and smiled when his
son came in.
"Everything all right?" he asked, with an attempt to be cheerful.
"Oh yes, fine," answered the boy, looking at the motionless model for
the five-hundredth time, and sticking his hands into his pockets. "I'm
only third in mathematics yet, but I'm head in everything else. I wish I
had your brains, father! I'd be at the head of the arithmetic class in half
a shake of a lamb's tail if I had your brains."
So far as mathematics were concerned this sounded probable to John
Henry, who would have considered the speed of the tail to be a variable
function of lamb, depending on the value of mother, plus or minus
milk.
"Well," he said in an encouraging tone, "I never could remember
geography, so it makes us even."
"I'd like to know how!" cried the boy in a tone of protest. "You could
do sums, and you grew up to be a great mathematician and inventor.
But what is the good of a geographician, anyway? They can only make
school-books. They never invent anything, do they? You can't invent
geography, can you? At least you can, and some boys do, but they go to
the bottom of the class like lead. It's safer to invent history than
geography, isn't it, father?"
Overholt's clever mouth twitched.
"It's much safer, my boy. Almost all historians have found it so."
"There! I said so to-day, and now you say just the same thing. I don't
believe one word of ancient history. Not--one--word! They wrote it
about their own nations, didn't they? All right. Then you might just as
well expect them to tell what really happened, as think that I'd tell on
another boy in my own school. I must say it would be as mean as dog
pie of them if they did, but all the same that does not make history true,
does it?"
Newton had a practical mind. His father, who had not, meditated with
unnecessary gravity on the boy's point of view and said nothing.
"For instance," continued the lad, sitting down on the high stool before
the lathe Overholt was not using, "the charge of Balaclava's a true story,
because it's been told by both sides; but they all say that it did no good,

anyway, except to make poetry of. But Marathon! Nobody had a
chance to say a word about it except the Greeks themselves, and they
weren't going to allow that the Persians wiped up the floor with them,
were they? Why should they? And if Balaclava had happened then,
those Greek fellows would have told us that the Light Brigade carried
the Russian guns back with them across their saddles, wouldn't they? I
say, father!"
"What is it?" asked Overholt, looking up, for he had gone back to his
work and was absorbed in it.
"The boys are all beginning to talk about Christmas down at the school.
Now what are we going to do at Christmas? I've been wondering."
"So have I!" responded the man, laying down the screw-plate with
which he was about to cut a fine thread on the end of a small brass rod
for the tangent-balance. "I've been thinking about it a good deal to-day,
and I haven't decided on anything."
"Let's have turkey and cranberry sauce, anyway," said Newton
thoughtfully, for he had a practical mind. "And I suppose we can have
ice-cream if it freezes and we can get some ice. Snow does pretty well
if you pack it down tight enough with salt, and go on putting in more
when it melts. Barbara doesn't make ice-cream as well as they do in
New York. She puts in a lot of winter-green and too little cocoanut. But
it's not so bad. We can have it, can't we, father?"
"Oh yes. Turkey, cranberry sauce, and ice-cream. But that isn't a whole
Christmas!"
"I don't see what else you want, I'm sure," answered the boy
thoughtfully. "I mean if it's a big turkey and there's enough
ice-cream--cream-cakes, maybe. You get good cream-cakes at Bangs's,
two for five cents. They're not very big, but they're all right inside--all
gooey, you know. Can you