JOHN PARRY’S COUNSEL.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1979, 28 June 1880, Page 2

JOHN PARRY’S COUNSEL.

“ Yes, I’ve had a good many fights in my time,” said old John Parry, tenderly manipulating his dismantled nose, “ and it’s kind of queer too, for when I was a boy the old man was always telling me better. He was a good old man and hated fighting. When I would come home with my nose bleeding, or with my face scratched up, he used to call me out in the woodshed, and in a sorrowful and discouraged way say —‘So, Johnny, you’re had another fight, hey ? How many times have I got to tell you how disgraceful and wicked it is for boys to fight ? It was only yesterday that I talked to you an hour about the sin of fighting, and here you’ve been at it again. Who was it with this time ? With Tommy Rally, hey ? Don’t you know better than to fight a boy that weighs twenty pounds more than you do, besides being two years older ? Ain’t you got a spark of sense about ye ? I can see plainly that you are determined to break your poor father’s heart by your reckless conduct. What ails your finger ? Tommy bit it ? Didn’t ye know how to keep your fingers out of his mouth ? Was trying to jerk his cheek off, hey ? Won’t you never learn to quit foolin’ ’round a boy’s mouth with your fingers ? You're bound to disgrace us all by such wretched behaviour. You’re determined never to be nobody. Did you ever hear of Isaac Watts—that wrote “ Let dogs delight to bark and bite ” —sticking his fingers in a boy’s mouth to get ’em bit, like a fool ? I’m clean discouraged with ye. Why didn’t ye go for his nose, the way Jonathan Edwards, and George Washington, and Daniel Webster used to do when they was boys ? Couldn’t ’cause he had ye down P That’s a purty story to tell me. It does beat all you can’t learn how Socrates and William Penn used to gouge when they was under, after the hours and hours I have spent in telling you about these great men ? It seems to me sometimes as if I should have to give you up in despair. It is an awful trial to me to have a boy that don’t pay any attention to good example, or to what I say. What! You pulled out two or three handfuls of hair ? H’m Did he squirm any ? Now, if you’d a give him one or two in the eye—but as I’ve told you many a time, fighting is poor business. Won’t you —for your father’s sake —won’t you promise to try and remember that! H’m! Johnny, how did it—ahem—which licked ? You licked him’ Sho ’ Really ? Well, now, I hadn’t any idea you could lick Tom Kelly! I don’t believe John Bunyan, at ten years old, could have done it. Johnny, my boy, you can’t think how I hate to have you fighting every day or two. I would not have him lick you for five, no, not for ten dollars. No, sonny, go right in and wash up, and tell your mother to put a rag on your Auger. And, Johnny, don’t let me hear of your fighting again.’ ” —Mark Twain.