SAME OLD THING.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 976, 27 December 1882, Page 2

SAME OLD THING.

■ O An old granger strolled into a bookstore on sixth a renue, Detroit, the oilier day, and stopped at a table where a lot of cheap novel, were displayed. He picked one of them up and began to turn its leaves with a curious and amused expression of countenance. A clerk passing by just the'n, the granger said . “ They keep on wridn’ these yallow-kivered novels yet, I see.” Clerk said they did. ‘‘Used to read every blessed one that kum out when I was a boy. Reckon I’ve gone through mor’n fourteen baskets on ’em in my day. though I hain’t tackled one in about for y years now. Don’t s’pose they’d read as they did then. Gittin’ married and raisin’ a large family sort o’ knocks the romantic and picturisk ont of a man, as it were. And with a wife and children lookin ot ye for bread what do you care for ‘Ogarita, the Forest Queen ; or the Trajerdy of the False Eyebrow,’ hey 1 I used to set up all night readin’ the ‘ Mysteries of the Castle o ban Juan del Boot Jack,’ or somethin’ like • hat, with my teeth chatterin’ till I shook the whole house. Couldn’t do it now. But I say do the novels run as they used to?” “Pretty much the same way,” replied the obliging clerk. “You don’t say ! Does the boss herowine eKclaim, “ Unhand me, villain, or by me father’s great horn spoons, I’ll throw meself from cliff and seek a peaceful grave beneath the waves that rastle for a position at its foot!” “That’s about the run of it.” “Well, I declare ! And when the villain swears she must be his’u though the heavens fall and hell yawns at his. feet, she shrieks the name of Gonraldo and takes the fataj plunge into the seething waters of the dark abyss. The billows close over her be-a-u-teous form, when,lo, Gonraldo—what does Gonraldo do nowadays, say 7” “Gonraldo plunges in—” “ Exactly !” interrupted the granger, excitedly. “Gonraldo, who has been watchin’ things from the clutch of the demon waves, crying, “Ha I ha! foiled 1 foiled !” Oh, it’s just the way the old thing run when I was a boy. Hain’t changed it a bit. And the pirate stories. Do they skim the bright sea foam in rakish lookin’ skuners (five cents a skuner), hull painted jet black, with a narrer streak of red runnin’ along the sides ?” “Oh yes.” You don’t tell me. And is the pirate’s bride as goocWookin’ as she used to be? I can see her now. standin ’ at the head of the powder magazine captive overboard, ’ Gomez de la Rutabaga, hold thy hand 7 Touch but a hair of that fair youth’s head, nnd I will blow thee and thy murderous crew to the weeping stars, and scatter thy proud bark among the coral reefs of the down sweeping sea !” “ What a memory you have got.” “Oh, I’m a haster. Hain’t read a pirate story since I was a boy, but I remember jest how they used to go. And the pirate’s cave, too. Same old cave, I s’pose 7” “ Pretty much the same cave. They light them with electricity now, though,” “ Well ; I s’pose -so. Pirates tumble to these new wrinkles quick as anybody Cook by steam, too, probably. Street cars runnin’ from the cave to the dock 7” “Yes, and a telephone connecting it with a signal station.” “ Well, said the stranger, “ we must expect a few eh ngcs in forty years. I see that the novgl jogs along in about the same old beaten track, though. But an old man like me hain’t any use for ’em any more. Good day.” And with a lingering though saddened look at the yellow covers that had called up fleeting visions of a past intellectual life, the old man left the store. —Amtrictm Pajjor.