His Grudge BY TOM P. MORGAN
Reading edition
“The Ladies’ Aid Society of the church have undertaken the task of collecting half a mile of pennies,” said the Old Codger’s niece, “for the purpose of sending our pastor on a vacation trip.”
“Humph!” answered the veteran, with all the suavity of a hyena.
“A row of cents half a mile long,” persisted the lady, “will amount, so Sister Eunice Tubman has figured out, to $420.00, and—”
“I don’t care what they amount to!” doggedly declared the venerable curmudgeon. “While I’ve got any sense nobody will get any cents out o’ me for any such purpose! I don’t care a contaminated drat whether ‘our pastor’ stays at home or goes to the Whangdoodle Islands—whatever he does won’t be at my expense, lemme just rise to remark!”
“But, Uncle, you know the laborer is worthy of his hire, and—”
“Yuss! And the less they labor the higher they want their hire to be! Labor!—huh! If more preachers would—aw, well, I won’t give an inch of that ’ere half mile of cents, and that settles it!”
“Why, Uncle, how can you talk so? You are generally ready to give to good causes, and—”
“Ah-yah! But his name is Bertram!”
“To be sure, it is! And he is in every way such a worthy young man, and so intellectual, too! What possible grudge can you have against him?”
“Just told ye!—his name is Bertram! He also says ‘eyther’ and ‘nyther’, which pronunciations cheat me out of all the good his sermons might otherwise do me. I could overlook that, though, if his name wasn’t Bertram. For years that’s been pretty nearly a fighting word with me. When I was a freckle-nosed schoolboy in the old Head-o’-the-River district, there was a boy named Bertram there, who had a swifter sled than mine, and didn’t have to wear his Pa’s cut-down-to-fit-him clothes like I did, and who spelt me down the last day of school, and took from me the bashful affection of the pantaletted little girl who was all the world to me at that particular time. I couldn’t get even with him then for he could lick me, and did. And ever since I’ve—”
“But, my goodness! This isn’t the same Bertram!”
“No, but he’s a Bertram, and somehow all Bertrams have looked alike to me ever since. All these years I’ve been hostile to Bertrams, and have never been able to conquer the feeling, try as I might. Any Bertram affects me the same way—a Bertram is a Bertram, to me, and I simply can’t help it. The Lord loves a cheerful giver, and as I couldn’t any more give cheerfully to this or any other Bertram than I could sing a hymn while sitting down on wet ice, I won’t add a cent to that ’ere half-mile of pennies. That’s all there is to it.”
