Show JUST A BOY lanrence hutsona Hut tona of hia inife in york he was not a very good boy or a very bad boy or a very bright boy or an unusual boy in any way ho was just a boy aud very often ho forgets that ho is not a boy now whatever there may bo about the boy that is commendable he owes to his father and to his mother and he feels should not be held responsible forit forita 1 hig mother was tho most generous and the most unselfish of human beings she was of somebody else always for others to her it waa blessed to give and it was not very pleasant to receive when she bought anything tho boys stereotyped query wag who is to have it when anything was bought for her her own invariable remark was what on earth shall I 1 do with it when the boy came to her ono summer morning she looked upon him as a gift from heaven and when ahe was told that it was a boy and not a bad looking or a bad conditioned boy her first words were what on earth shall I 1 do with it she found plenty to do with it before she got through with it more than 40 years afterward end tho boy has every reason to believe that she never regretted the gift indeed she once told him late in her life that he had never made her cry what better benediction can a boy have than that tho boy was redheaded and long nosed even from the beginning a shy dreaming self conscious little boy made peculiarly familiar with his personal defects by ba constant remarks to tho effect that his hair was red and that his nose was long at school for years ho was known familiarly as eufus redhead Bed head carrot top or nosy his mother married at 19 was the eldest of n family of nine children and many of the boys aunts and uncles were but a few years his senior and were his daily and familiar companions he was tho only member of his own generation for a long time and thero was a constant fear upon the part of tho eldera that ho was likely to bo spoiled and consequently ho was never praised nor petted nor coddled he was always falling down or dropping things he was always getting into the way and he could not learn to spoil correctly norto cipher at all ho was never in his mothers way however and he was never naadi to feel BO but nobody except the boy knows of the agony which the rest of the family unconsciously and with no thought of hurting his feelings caused him by tho fun they poked at his nose at his fiery locks and at his ho fancied that passersby pitied him as ho walked or pla the streets and ho sincerely pitied himself as a youth destined to grow up into an awkward tactless stupid man at whom the world would laugh so long as his lifo lasted A boy I 1 knew by laurence hutton in st nicholas |