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Show JOHNNY'S COMPOSITION. Johnny didn't like to write compositions. There was a roaring wood-fire in the fire-place, and Johnny had brought up from a cellar a basketful of pine cones, and it was such jolly fun to toss them into the flames, one by one. Who wouldn't rather do this than write compositions? "I hate ‘em!" said Johnny. By and by, jumping up so suddenly that [unreadable] mat, opened her great eyes in wonder she began to search for his slate and pencil. "Seen my slate and things, Minnie?" he said to his sister. But Minnie was reading and did not reply. Johnny drew near and looked over her shoulder at the picture of a pretty girl and a young gentleman gazing most intently into each other's faces. "Guess I'll write a story, too!" he remarked. It was easy enough to begin. "Once upon a time" wrote Johnny, "there was a girl named-named-" (here he paused to think a minute) "named Maud Mudford. Her father he wanted her to go to the post office one afternoon; so she got on her horse, and off she went a flying." "Pretty soon she came to the woods, and, just as she was ridin' by, a robber grabbed her off her horse, and she was screechin' fearful when a young gentleman, who was hidin' in the bushes, took the robber by the neck and stabbed him dead with his penknife. Then the girl she fell in love with this young man, and he married her. But they were so dreadful poor that he got tired supportin' their seven children, so he strung his wife and all of ‘em up on the clothes-line like beads, in the dead of night, and they caught him, and he was hung at Rockaway beach on the Fourth of July." "That's a tip-top-story!" said Johnny to himself, feeling quite proud of his evening's work. "Why, Johnny Miller, what a horrible story!" exclaimed his sister Minnie. "You fairly make me shudder. You mustn't take that to school. Write about something that's happened at home. Write a description of your ride to the Falls." "Think I'm goin' to write another one?" said indignant Johnny. "It's awful hard work, I tell you. Why don't you like it? It's a nice story." "But it isn't natural enough, Johnny." "Why not?" "Because people don't do such ridiculous things in real life. You don't intend to kill your wife when you grow up and are married, do you?" "Ain't goin' to get married," said Johnny stoutly. "What would I spend my money on a strange woman for? Guess I've got mamma and Aunt Susie. I don't want a strange woman ‘round me." "Well, go and write your composition now," said Minnie, laughing. So Johnny seated himself again on the mat in front of the fire, crossed his little fat legs and began to think. "She said I'd better write a ‘scription of my ride to the Falls," he said to himself. "S'pose I've got to tell something ‘bout it so it'll be natural." "Last Tuesday mornin'," he began, "mamma and Minnie and me and Jim Merril, a feller that comes to see Minnie most every night, we all went over to the Falls. I sat on the front seat with Jim, and Minnie sat behind with mamma, and Jim kept lookin' round at her all the time. He was fearful polite to mamma, but he wouldn't talk to me much. It was pretty near three o'clock when we got there. We walked ‘round the woods a while and when I hollered to ‘em to hurry up mamma told me to be still. When we got home Minnie told him she had had a charming ride, and I ate four biscuits for supper. The Falls was tip-top." Just here Johnny's mother called him to go to bed, and he forgot to ask Minnie if this was natural enough, but went off to school the next morning with his composition safe in the leaves of Colburn's mental arithmetic. The schoolmaster was a young man, and he smiled so often as he read Johnny's production that the young writer, said to himself complacently: "Guess he likes it first rate." |
