VACATION TRIALS.
Reading edition
JOHNIE'S STORY.
I wanted to be good. I wanted to have lots of fun.
When I got up in the morning I said, "Here's another long day, and no school." I did n't have to hurry up. Mamma let me take as long as I liked to eat my breakfast.
After breakfast was the worst. We wanted to do the biggest lot of things you ever knew, but we could n't.
We began to play store. That was fun for a little while. Then Susan scolded because we took her new pie-pans for our angleworms. We sold the worms ten for a cent for the boys to fish with.
When we were tired of the store, we had to put things all back in their places.
We wanted a circus. Wo made a good one with our cat Mopsy for a tiger. Six boys gave us five pins each to see it. They found the pins in their mothers' cushions.
Edgar Lane's mother bought a ticket. We made tickets out of pretty colored paper.
I lost mother's best scissors somehow. It took all the money in my bank to pay for them.
When we were having some jolly fun Susan called out, "You bad, wicked children, you've got your ma's best shawl for a curtain."
We did n't know it was her best shawl. It didn't look nice. Papa said it was camel's hair. We never thought camels had such queer hair.
We didn't play circus any more.
We went in the garden and camped out. We played the trees were high mountains. I was on the Alps. My sister in the grammar school told me about the Alps.
Edgar was in the same tree on another limb.
He called his "The Catskills." He went to those mountains once. We had a splendid time. Pretty soon Grandpa came out and said, "Here, you young rascals, come down, you will shake off all my nice fruit!"
There don't seem to be any place for boys.
I told Susan so, and she said boys were always in the way.
If we could only leave things around it would be better.
It spoils vacation when some one keeps saying, "Don't do that!" or, "O, dear, those boys!"
Edgar says clothes are hateful things. His mother wants him to look pretty. He wants to roll on the grass, but he can't. My mother lets me. I have some overalls and stout shoes, and I roll.
My papa says boys have to climb and roll and keep busy if they want to grow strong.
When we got tired of our mountains we went fishing. I tumbled in and spoiled my straw hat. It was not deep, only the mud.
Vacations would be nice if it wasn't for the big folks. They want you to do as they do.
My papa and mamma don't, but grandma and aunties and my big cousins do. They make you feel prickly all over telling you about proper things.
I tell you it's real hard to feel full of fun and not let it out. It's hard to be a boy in vacation unless you can go off in the country or down by the sea.
—KATE TANNATT WOODS.
