Show THE ENFANT TERRIBLE BIlly Nyes Ideas Concerning Young Ideas Children and fools tell the truth I have heard and certainly children have a faculty of working the truth in at the wrong tLue Truth is agood thingin its place But the great harm comes from using it at an inopportune time I am the only and original father of one of the class of children who are loquacious loqua-cious and truthful in a way that makes the parent heart bleed sometimes q this little incident did not happen to make me its victim I would scorn tit t-it for people ought not to make themselves them-selves or their children too conspicuously conspicuous-ly smart in print Guests were invited to dinner and while in my baronial hall the welkin rang and the cold baked bean was passed pass-ed around amid joyous laughter and witty remarks rang out on the warm airwhile the gorgeous flagons and glittering cutglass and silver of a neighbor shone resplendent beneath the mellow light of the chandelier and candelabra can-delabra the humble writer of these lines as the host would ever and anon make a brilliant remark which would be received with wild and tumultuous I applause I If a guest sought to evade his duty ann an applauder or to come in on tim with his or her welcome plaudit tha guest was marked by the eagle eye o the carvist and he was given the neck of the turkey and the wing of the ducK as a mark of respect Habitual guests at my house hav learned this and when 1 ladle out th gravy and a Jew de sprit as A Ward called they know that they Can tak their choice between boisterous laughte and starvation In this way the mea passes off with much eclat For eacld slash of the carvingknife there is at suitable joke and those who have been in the habit of eating at my table ar aware that there is a proper mom en for mirth just as there is for napkins fingerbowls or coffee I do this partly because I want t draw attention from my carving Mj carving is like niv dancing It is no conventional ft is extremely original bold and audacious I try to intro duce joints where nature did not in4 tend to have them and I seek to make shortcuts across a fowl in a way that is productive only of chagrin vexation and fragments of hen Man is a weak fallible creature and he ought not to seek to monkey with the anatomy of a fowl or to improvise join tsand aperture where they do not belong for at such time as you think not a knife will slip and it will tip over the celeryglass and fill the bosom of a warm personal friend with Sravv To i attract attention and keep up the spirits of the company therefore I make it a kInd of business as it were to till the air with harmless amusement at the same time that I shed stuffing through the atmosphere and mutilate the bosom of the hen This gives mean me-an opportunity occasionally to gather up the sage breadcrunbs and gizzards out of my lap and return them to the platter without exciting remark A few weeks ago on anoccasion of this kind a cousin of mine a young lawyer connected with the Omaha road a young man of good parts and whose business it is to stand between the Omaha road and substantial justice at so much a year and traveling expenses ex-penses was present I had just said something smart to keep the company goodnatured while I asked a young lady at theo other end of the table to please return the duck which I had inadvertently presented te h t etfk her with the carvingfork stuck in it Everyone was laughing joyously and trying to conceal it by putting their napkins in their mouths When my cousin turned to my little daughter and saidBessie Bessie havent you got a unny papa though 1 Yes indeed said the ungrateful unfilial and irreverent heir apparent tea te-a great name You better believe he s funny when we have company And yet people wonder why I am not the same genial host that I use to band tn and why the children do not eat at the first table and why there is a sound of kicking against the door of an adjoin ing room and the occasional wail of a hungry child as the meal progresses Eli Perkins once told me that he was teaching his little girl to tell the truth I asked him who he employed to attend to the irksometaskand whether he was not rash to take an a branch of the science for which there was getting to be so little use It is said that truth is mighty and will prevail It is certainly mighty in the mouth of a child Still we may always expect more or lessof it from children until they get to moving in good society and learn better betterBILL NYE I |