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Show 4 1 ..OuFBoys and Hfrls.. I I ' Edited by Aunt' Busy. This (Iep;irtmf-nt is "conducted solely in the in-((..n.-t of our p-irl nd boy genders. uiii l!usy is ylad lo lionr any time from tho , ircrs ;ini nephews .who read this pape, and to give I . all the advice and help in her power. : ' Write on one side of the paper only. I P,i not -have letters too long. Original stories and verses will be gladly rc-i rc-i reived and carefully edited. j The manuscripts of contributions not-accepted will be returned. ' ! Address ail lesters to Aunt Busy, Interniounlain j Catholic, Salt Lake City. I t THE BOYS "WE NEED. I i , ITcr"-"s to i lie boy. who is not afraid j To do his sl);iro of work; : Who never is by toil dismayed r And never tries Xo shirk. i ' ; The boy whose heart is brave to meet I All liens in the way: t "Who's not discouraged by defeat, ! But tries another day. : Thf boy who always means to do The very best he wn; . V.'ho always keeps the right m view, And aims to be a man. Such bovs as those will prow to bo I The men whose hands will guide ' The future of our land, and we , Shall speak thu'r 'names with pride. ( l All honor t the boy who is ', . All A man at heart. I say; . -J i Whose Jogend on his shield is this: ' "J light always wins the day." AUNT BUSY SAYS VERY LITTLE. )car X' iees and Xephows: 4 Antit Busy has not much to say this week be- , .-:iw she has not received very many let tors. ? She wonhl love to hear about the good times v. w are having, camping, hunting and lishing. init Busy lov( s to hear about fishing ami tho v.ephew who will send in a "really truly'' good fish i.ry will be given a prize by Aunt Busy. ; Aunt Busy has heard many fish stories this summer but none from the dear boys and girls vh" write to her. The people who told the tales are ; .-ill too old to bo mentioned in Aunt Busy's department. depart-ment. They are as old as Aunt Busy so you t know how truly ancient they are. Dear children s i!" not quite forget vour old, AUNT Bl'SY. i P. S. Aunt Busy will really "melt with grief if she dues not receive a little more attention ; from her nc ice's and nephews. Imagine the poor, fat old soul melting! ! ! LETTERS AND ANSWERS. Hooper, Utah, June 2", 1004. Be Mr Aunt Busy: i We have moved to Hooper and I like it very well. 1 am in the sixth grade. 1 have made my first, communion and confirmation. Well, I will close for this time. I'min vour loving nephew, JOSEPH M'XAMAItA. Aunt Busy hopes to hear fronryou frequently, Jesc-ph. How do you like Hooper? Aunt Busy likes railroad towns because she en- j joys watching the trains. j Salt Lake City, July 10. Bear Aunt Busy: : I am only six years old and have four dolls, two pussy-eats, one doggie, a baby sister and a big brother. 1 am very fond of my little sister. Aunt f , . Buv. Your lovinc noice, I' ' " XELLIE II AX LEY. A glad welcome, to the small neiee from Aunt Ti;sv! Surely you are a happy little person with a Fwtv-t sister, a dear brother and so many pets. Be rrvy kind to the wee sister, Xellie. ! , i Butte, Mont., July 0, 1901. Dear Aunt Busy: This will be my last letter to you. 1 have been writing for many years but am loo old now. 1 am veering the long trousers and high collars you lisvc so of toned mentioned in your interesting letter-. I want to say that I have enjoyed your let-' let-' ter and answers always, and I think you one of the (loare.-t of old ladies. Good bye. Aunt Busy. Your affectionate friend, LAEBEa'CE CKOX1X. Aunt Buv-deeply regrets losing her dear h'phew, Laurence. , S.. many of her boys have reached the "high '';:" stage of life that she is feeling very sad ' late. She only wishes that her boys would sm-vt fer-1 too old to write her because to Aunt La-y tiie 'little chaps who have written to her for m many years will still be little bovs even with the Mop-ladder-' collars. She appreciates your kind words, Laurence, and extends her best wihes for good fortune to : ;!tietld you. She knows, you will always be a good b"y and a gentleman and earnestly hopes you will viiietiines think-of funny old Aunt Busy. Denver, Colo.. July 10. I 'car Aunt fhisy: i I am going lo write you a few lines to say that I have neglected you for so long that I am sorry, j have a brother who would like to write but he i i j -iiful. I remain vour loving neice, v JEXXIH OWEX. Y.u .ire very welcome again, little neice! ' '"it Busy has missed you.' Tell the bashful ! "'.'(r ihat Aunt Busy wants to hear from him She dearly loves all her boys, bashful or HINTS TOR AUNT BUSY'S GIRLS. J lb' re- are ; few things which well conducted '.' f "" ''-ij-:bo- young girls never do: They do not :i;n th.-ir heads to look after impertinent men; do write II v letters to young men or permit them 'o v.riie sin.-li letters; do not get into the habit of "p'aking familiarly to all the men they know; do ; '"' direct iheir conversation to cue jierson when ve.j'id visitors mx- present; do not imagine that "very man who is pleasant lo (hem has fallen in '"e with them. They do not 1aTk and laugh loudly 'i' lt traveling or in any public place where they " ;iv a' tract attention. IN THE FLOWERY KINGDOM. Do you know that when two friends meet in iiina each shakes hands with himself instead of It each other a v? do?. ! you know ihat China has the oldest news-I'.iper news-I'.iper in the world, ami that it is the king Ga-"; Ga-"; eo! i Do you know that if a banker fails in China j he is beheaded, and that there have been no Kink . failures in that country for over nine hundred rears? !J Do you know that the queue or "pigtail" of the ! (-'hi unman is a badge of .disgrace or servitude; which was imposed by the Tartars after their sue- ! fe-sful invasion of the empire in the war KiL"). Do you know that, the edible birds' nests of the i Chinese arc not collected in China, but in the caves ; of Borneo or other equatorial islands; and that ! they are -composed .of a very fine gelatine, so that I y when they are cleaned of feathers and down they f. are an exceedingly delicate luxury on the native I I menu '. " i ;. Do you know that in China they select feathers . f I ircm the blue, major kingfisher ami cpnwjt them "I i " ' f j . J cleverly upon delicate filagree work in both gold and silver, and that in the course of a few years the boys who do this work become totally blind Do you know that in Canton, China there is a water clock, or clepsydra, which is over 500 years old? It has been many times destroyed and rebuilt and destroyed, until today, notwithstanding the wonderful advance in western methods of 'measuring 'meas-uring time, it is still in use. It is composed of three copper vessels placed one above the other upon step-like platforms. In the bottom vessel is an indicator scale passing through it. which, as the water fills the lower vessel, rises and shows the time. On the notice board outside the building the hour of the day is indicated by a timekeeper. HOW MISS ALMIRA CELEBRATED ( By ,!ary Morrison. Bop! pop! fiz! whiz! whoop! bang! The eagle had begun to scream. The boys at Hackett's Corners Cor-ners were already celebrating, and there would be neither peace nor rest for the next twenty-four hours. liss Ahnira had know how it would be when Sitiu Ajkins. her next door neighbor, came home from Pendleton an hour ago. Every boy in the neighborhood had sent by him for firecrackers and powder. Miss Ahnira was afraid of powder, and noise gave her nervous headache. There was a black cloud in the west that betokened rain. She hoped it was not a false prophecy, as she put the tubs out under the eaves. Tommy Atkins was firing off crackers the other side of the fence He was also watching. Miss Al-mira Al-mira out of his "weather eye.'' Presently an apparently ap-parently false motion sent one flying over the fence at ?Iiss Almira's very feet, where it went off with a loud bang, startling her n"ariy into spasms,. while her pot cat leaped wildly into the air and then took refuge on the ridgepole of the cottage. Miss Ahnira gave him a look of keen reproach, which failed of its intended effect. Tommy Atkins was usually a nice kind of si boy. What was it about the Fourth of July that turned bovs into fiend.:? Tommy was delighted at his success. He lit a whole bunch and tossed them over the fence when Miss Almira's back was turned. They fell with ft soft thump (dose beside her, and she watched the swiftly burning fuse with fascinated gaze a moment, mo-ment, then fled precipitately into the house and shut tho door against the fusilade of rapid artillery outside. Tommy 'was disgusted. He had wasted a whole bunch on one old woman, who had not waited to be scared. There was enough in that bunch tc have frightened all the cats in town into fits. Tommy Tom-my was of an economical turn of mind. After the smoke of battle had cleared away. Miss Ahnira called in the cat. locked all the doors and put down the curtains. Then she stuffed her ears with cotton and sat down with the eat, in her lap. She knew what the next few hours would bring forth. The Burch boys, the Brown boys and the Yanderburg boys joined forces with Tommy presently, pres-ently, and pandemonium reigned. They always celebrated as close to Miss Almira's back door as possible. It was 12 o'clock when the last cannon cracker went off amid hideous howls of satisfaction, satisfac-tion, which grew fainter, and finally faded away altogether. Tommy's allies had gone home, and Miss Ahnira. trembling and unnerved, crept away to bed. She fell into a troubled sleep about 1 o'clock, which lasted undisturbed for two hours, and then the time-honored anvil at llack'ett's Corners awoke the slumbering echoes, also Miss Ahnira. There was no more sleep for her, and she lay and cowered miserably with nervous fear at the continuous explosions ex-plosions which tore, shrieking, through the silence of the night. Somewhere she had heard that heavy cannonading was sure to bring rain, and it was the only drop of consolation in the overflowing cup of her misery; but she was destined to disappointment. The morning dawned bright and beautiful. Xot a cloud softened the ecrulean blue of the sky. and Miss Almira took her wooden tubs back into the cellar with evident disappointment. She had no appetite fo rbreakfast, and nibbled at her dry toast and drank her English breakfast tea with a depressed de-pressed air, which lightened somewhat as the buggies bug-gies and wagons began to go by. They seemed to be filled principally with boys; for this she felt thankful. There were eight in Jerry Brown's warron. She brightened visibly after they had gone by, ami drew a long breath of relief. How nice and still it was. She thought of the noisy, distracting crowds at Pendleton was a shudder. Miss Almira never went to Fourth of July celebrations. She pulled the' kitchen rocker up beside the Window, where the breath of the great sweetbrier came floating in, and sat down to enjoy the silence. She must have dozed off for a few moments, for the next thing she was conscious of was a confusion of trampling feect and a shrill cry of pain. She started up in bewinlderment. and went to the door just in time to see a small, barefooted boy in blue gingham shirt and overalls scramble up off the ground and limp to where an old gray horse stood dejectedly by the roadside. It was little Joe Tear-sall. Tear-sall. He was an orphan and lived with old Mr. and Mrs. McDermott. over on the State road. She had seeon them drive by in a top buggy an hour earlier. It was like them to leave the boy to ride old Gray to the. celebration. He grasped the bridle and tried to lead the animal ani-mal up to the fence, but it seemed to have gone hopelessly lame. "He's gone and stumbled and hurt himself a purpose, so I can't go to the Fourth," lie said, despairingly, as Miss Almira came out to the fate. "He lias hurt you, too, hasn't he V she asked, solicitously, pointing to Joe's foot, from which the blood was ridding down. , Joe. looked down unconcernedly. "Huh! that ain't nothing.. '"T wouldn't hurt me none to ride," he said. "But you haven't got anything to ride now. Poor old Gray. You had better turn him into the pasture here and come in and let me dress your foot," she told him. It was not a serious injury, but the dressing was quite a painful operation, which Joe bore without flinching. She bandaged it in arnic-i and made him as comforlable as possible pos-sible with a dish of ripe strawberries smothered in sugar snow, which was Miss Almira's idea of offering consolation to a boy. lie ate them absently, however, with a far-away gaze which she knew instinctively was looking across country to where the crowds were gathering at Pendleton. "You can go to the celebration next year." she told him, consolingly. There was reproachful disbelief in his eyes as he looked up into her face. "'Taint likely. I'm 10 year old and T ain't never went to one yet," he said. "I ain't never had but one bunch of firecrackers, fire-crackers, neither," he added in aggrieved accents. The distress in his face was very real, it was so thoroughly hopeless. Something came up into Miss Almira's throat and choked her, as she realized real-ized the dull emptiness of his life and the magnitude magni-tude of this disappointment, which she had hoped to alleviate wiih strawberries. A sense of all that the boy had really missed came to her in a sudden tide of childish memories of waving flags and gay uniforms, of throbbing music and marching- feet, of merry, noisy crowds, of which she, herself, was the merriest and noisiest. Evcji now her pulses quickened to the rapid ryhthm of childhood at the recollection." She looked up at the clock; it was only 10 o'clock. Miss Almira was not given to sudden sud-den decisions, but she turned now and went abruptly ab-ruptly out of the door. Old Kate, out in the pasture, pas-ture, was making the acquaintance of her strange companion. Miss Almira drove her up to the barn and put on her harness, then she hitched her to the ohPfashionod carriage, 'arid tied her under a tree. When she went back to the house, Joe stood at the window, looking toward Pendleton. Several big tears had dropped off the end of his sunburned nose to the window sill below, but Miss Almira affected af-fected not to notice them. She went into her bedroom bed-room and shut the door, and when she came out she had on her best black dress, also. her hat and wrap. Then she went out into tho garden and picked a handful of bachelor buttons pink, blue and white and made them into two bouquets, one of which she pinned conspicuously at her throat. The other one she took to Joe. 'Tut them in your hatband," she said. "Everybody "Every-body wears red, white and blue when they go to the Fourth of July," she told him. lie looked up in amazed bewilderment. "Are you bo we " "Yes, we 'be.' We are going to the Fourth of July celebration," she said, brightly. Some of the boy's eager excitement Mir red her blood as she lifted him to a seat in the carriage beside her and drove away. The staid old town looked unfamiliar in its "-ay, Hirting bunting. She felt a new thrill of patriotism as the grateoul folds of Old Glory caught the breezes and floated out full and free over her head, and she was conscious of a sudden absurd desire to cheer, to shoot off a toy cannon, to celebrate in some way. which, however, she decorously repressed, but she felt the burden of a score of years fall away as she stepped into line behind the brass baud, together to-gether with a throng of careworn old-young girls and stooped, gray-haired boys of uncertain age, and marched awry down the street with Joe's hand in hers. His sore foot did not hurt him. He was conscious con-scious of only one desire now. and that was to march in a grand Fourth of July parade forever. It was a memorable day. The pink taffy and lemonade and popcorn balls which Miss Almira bought and shared with Joe. regardless of indigestion, were sufficient to mark it with huge red letters, but the crowning glory came when she took him to a stand and bought liberally and even recklessly of firecrackers, nigger chasers, and hosts of other explosive things, and heaped them into his arms with overwhelming prodigality. "We'll have a celebration of our own when we get home," she told him. His guardians made no objections when she requested re-quested that Joe be allowed to spend the night with her, on the condition that he lead old Gray home in the morning, and he felt all the glory of his position as he stood on a box in Miss Almira's back yard, the central figure in a kaleidoscopic display dis-play of colored fire, which turned Tommy Atkins green with envy. Miss Almira sat on the back doorstep and watched the proceedings with pleased interest. She even forgot to jump when Joe tired off his biggest cannon cracker, which astounding display of nerve Tommy Atkins regarded witr sorrowful surprise. "We sha'n't have no fun at all next year," he said, dejectedly. Ladies' World. THE DOG AND THE CHICKENS. Councilman Wilfred F. Harrison of Bloomfield, X. J., is the possessor of a setter dog answering to the name of "Vic," which has adopted a brood of game chickens. Vic formerly kept the neighbors awake at night, but, since he has formed the acquaintance of the chicks, he las given up making the night hideous, and spends the greater part of his time taking care of his new friends. Vic's master put an old hen, with her coop and brood of chicks, near the kennel. Every time a chick came near his kennel Vic -wagged his tail and in other ways took pains to show his friendship. friend-ship. , Several of the chicks took to the dog, and finally fin-ally the whole brood' deserted their mother and 'went to him. Vic now chews his bone and allows morsels to drop to the ground where the little chickens chick-ens can feast on them. At night the chickens sung-glc sung-glc close 'to his warm body in great contentment. "TRAVELER'S JOY." When on some country road you pass, And see the daisies in the grass And buttercups that gayly grow, On slender stalks swayed to and fro Doiit gather every flower in view: Leave some for those who follow ybu! When, walking in the city street, Spme obstacle you chance to meet, Remove it with a loving care. Lest to some foot it prove a snare: 'Tis but a kindly think to do-Think do-Think of the feet that follow you! And, as on life's highway you pro, Sow seeds of love, and love will groWi Remove the stumbling: blocks aside-Self-seeking', jealousy and pride Lest other feet should stumble, too The tender feet that follow you. And when at last thee paths you leave. Some tears shall fall, some hearts shall grieve, Safer and better by the road Which once you traveled with your load, And men be kinder and more true Because their footsteps follow you! Helen Knight Wyman in Boston ' Cooking School Magazine. |