



Produced by An Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteer





BACK HOME

By Eugene Wood




                                TO
                         THE SAINTED MEMORY
               OF HER WHOM, IN THE DAYS BACK HOME,
                       I KNEW AS "MY MA MAG"
           AND WHO WAS MORE TO ME THAN I CAN TELL, EVEN
                  IF MY TARDY WORDS COULD REACH HER
                      THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

                   "That she who is an angel now
                    Might sometimes think of me"




CONTENTS

     INTRODUCTION
     THE OLD RED SCHOOL-HOUSE
     THE SABBATH-SCHOOL
     THE REVOLVING YEAR
     THE SWIMMING-HOLE
     THE FIREMEN'S TOURNAMENT
     THE DEVOURING ELEMENT
     CIRCUS DAY
     THE COUNTY FAIR
     CHRISTMAS BACK HOME




INTRODUCTION

GENTLE READER:--Let me make you acquainted with my book, "Back Home."
(Your right hand, Book, your right hand. Pity's sakes! How many times
have I got to tell you that? Chest up and forward, shoulders back and
down, and turn your toes out more.)

It is a little book, Gentle Reader, but please don't let that prejudice
you against it. The General Public, I know, likes to feel heft in its
hand when it buys a book, but I had hoped that you were a peg or two
above the General Public. That mythical being goes on a reading spree
about every so often, and it selects a book which will probably last out
the craving, a book which "it will be impossible to lay down, after it
is once begun, until it is finished." (I quote from the standard book
notice). A few hours later the following dialogue ensues:


"Henry!"

"Yes, dear."

"Aren't you'most done reading?"

"Just as soon as I finish this chapter." A sigh and a long wait.

"Henry!"

"Yes, dear."

"Did you lock the side-door?" No answer.

"Henry! Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Did you lock the side-door?"

"In a minute now."

"Yes, but did you?"

"M-hm. I guess so."

"'Guess so!' Did you lock that side-door? They got in at Hilliard's
night before last and stole a bag of clothes-pins."

"M."

"Oh, put down that book, and go and lock the side-door. I'll not get a
wink of sleep this blessed night unless you do."

"In a minute now. Just wait till I finish this..."

"Go do it now."

Mr. General Public has a card on his desk that says, "Do it Now," and so
he lays down his book with a patient sigh, and comes back to it with a
patent grouch.

"Oh, so it is," says the voice from the bedroom. "I remember now, I
locked it myself when I put the milk-bottles out.... I'm going to stop
taking of that man unless there's more cream on the top than there has
been here lately."

"M."

"Henry!"

"Oh, what is it?"

"Aren't you'most done reading?"

"In a minute, just as soon as I finish this chapter."

"How long is that chapter, for mercy's sakes?"

"I began another."

"Henry!"

"What?"

"Aren't you coming to bed pretty soon? You know I can't go to sleep when
you are sitting up."

"Oh, hush up for one minute, can't ye? It's a funny thing if I can't
read a little once in a while."

"It's a funny thing if I've got to be broke of my rest this way. As much
as I have to look after. I'd hate to be so selfish.... Henry! Won't you
please put the book down and come to bed?"

"Oh, for goodness sake! Turn over and go to sleep. You make me tired."

Every two or three hours Mrs. General Public wakes up and announces that
she can't get a wink of sleep, not a wink; she wishes he hadn't brought
the plagued old book home; he hasn't the least bit of consideration for
her; please, please, won't he put the book away and come to bed?

He reaches "THE END" at 2:30A.M., turns off the gas, and creeps into
bed, his stomach all upset from smoking so much without eating anything,
his eyes feeling like two burnt holes in a blanket, and wishing that
he had the sense he was born with. He'll have to be up at 6:05, and he
knows how he will feel. He also knows how he will feel along about three
o'clock in the afternoon. Smithers is coming then to close up that deal.
Smithers is as sharp as tacks, as slippery as an eel, and as crooked as
a dog's hind leg. Always looking for the best of it. You need all
your wits when you deal with Smithers. Why didn't he take Mrs. General
Public's advice, and get to bed instead of sitting up fuddling himself
with that fool love-story?

That's how a book should be to be a great popular success, and one
that all the typewriter girls will have on their desks. I am guiltily
conscious that "Back Home" is not up to standard either in avoirdupois
heft or the power to unfit a man for business.

Here's a book. Is it long? No. Is it exciting? No. Any lost diamonds
in it? Nup. Mysterious murders? No. Whopping big fortune, now teetering
this way, and now teetering that, tipping over on the Hero at the last
and smothering him in an avalanche of fifty-dollar bills? No. Does She
get Him? Isn't even that. No "heart interest" at all. What's the use of
putting out good money to make such a book; to have a cover design for
it; to get a man like A. B. Frost to draw illustrations for it, when he
costs so like the mischief, when there's nothing in the book to make a
man sit up till 'way past bedtime? Why print it at all?

You may search me. I suppose it's all right, but if it was my money,
I'll bet I could make a better investment of it. If worst came to worst,
I could do like the fellow in the story who went to the gambling-house
and found it closed up, so he shoved the money under the door and went
away. He'd done his part.

And yet, on the other hand, I can see how some sort of a case can be
made out for this book of mine. I suppose I am wrong-I generally am in
regard to everything--but it seems to me that quite a large part of the
population of this country must be grown-up people. If I am right
in this contention, then this large part of the population is being
unjustly discriminated against. I believe in doing a reasonable amount
for the aid and comfort of the young things that are just beginning to
turn their hair up under, or who rub a stealthy forefinger over their
upper lips to feel the pleasant rasp, but I don't believe in their
monopolizing everything. I don't think it's fair. All the books
printed--except, of course, those containing valuable information; we
don't buy those books, but go to the public library for them--all the
books printed are concerned with the problem of How She can get Him, and
He can get Her.

Well, now. It was either yesterday morning or the day before that you
looked in the glass and beheld there The First Gray Hair. You smiled a
smile that was not all pure pleasure, a smile that petered out into a
sigh