"You bring us a hundred and fifty miles to look at an old bone pile all tramped into the ground and then say that the animal is extinck. That's a great way to talk to an old man like me, a man old enough to be your grandfather. Probly you cacklate that it is a rare treat for an old-timer like me to waller through from Green River to the Yallerstone and then hear a young kangaroo with a moth-eaten eyebrow under his nose burst forth into a rollicking laugh and say that the animal we've been trailin' for five days is extinck.
"I just want to say to you, James Trilobite Eton, and I say it for your good and I say it with no prejudice against you, for I want to see you succeed, that if this ever happens agin and you are the party to blame you will wake up with a wild start on the follerin' day and find yourself a good deal extincker than this here old busted lizard is."
STYLE OF SCHOOL LITERATURE KNOWN THIRTY YEARS AGO.
ONE OF BILL NYE'S SELECTIONS, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF--ARRANGED WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE MATTER OF CHOICE, DELICATE AND DIFFICULT WORDS.
One day as George Oswald was going to his tasks, and while passing through the wood, he spied a tall man approaching in an opposite direction along the highway.
"Ah," thought George, in a low, mellow tone of voice, "whom have we here?"
"Good morning, my fine fellow," exclaimed the stranger, pleasantly. "Do you reside in this locality?"
"Indeed I do," retorted George, cheerily dropping his cap. "In yonder cottage, near the glen, my widowed mother and her thirteen children dwell with me."
"And how did your papa die?" asked the man, as he thoughtfully stood on the other foot awhile.
"Alas, sir," said George, as a large hot tear stole down his pale cheek and fell with a loud report on the warty surface of his bare foot, "he was lost at sea in a bitter gale. The good ship foundered two years ago last Christmastide, and father was foundered at the same time. No one knew of the loss of the ship and that the crew was drowned until the next spring, and it was then too late."
"And what is your age, my fine fellow?" quoth the stranger.
"If I live until next October," said the boy, in a declamatory tone of voice suitable for a Second Reader, "I will be 7 years of age."