A DADDY'S CONFESSIONS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 11123, 24 July 1907, Page 1 (Supplement)

A DADDY'S CONFESSIONS.

Before the Daddy became a daddy he and hi_ Marthy used to hug themselves in pretended delight at the fact that all during their five years of matrimony the stork had missed their humble dwelling. I don't mean that we were uppish about it, he explains, . but we did feel that we could live a little better than' our neighbors, that had all the expense of children, and if our house was fixed up a little better and we were able to go on three or fojir weeks in the summer to the mountains, when all the rest stayed right at home, w« had a right to feel pleased about it. Lots of times we had things our neighbors couldn't afford, and then the little woman would say. to me, "Hiram, you don't knOw how thankful I am that we ain't got any children," ahd I agreed with her every time, and did it. hearty, too. Yet somehow the sight of the two Heminway children across the way made them feel lonesome. One night Hiram and Marthy watched them as tney. sat on their porch. They had coaxed an extra half-hour to wait for their father to come home before they went to bed. Them Hemingway's whistle was heard, and' the two children ran to the gate,and j there was a rush and a mingling up 'of | Hemingway's kids and father. Happy? I turned to the little woman, and I looked straight at her. Somehow I knew that now, if ever, was a time for me to do som© cheering up. "Well, • little woman," I says cheerfully, , "we don't need a lot of kids to bolster up pur love, do we?" " Just then them Hemingways went in-, side, and our whole end of the town was quiet and lonesome. <t Marthy didn't answer, and when I lifted up her face to kiss ner, what d'you think? She was cryin' ! And then after all the stork paused on its' next visit at Hiram and Marthy's j house, and it brought with it a fine bouncing girl, and they baptised herj Edith L., and called her Dee-dee, and they looked back with wonder and scorn j upon the time when they had thought a I kid was more bother than it was worth !

" "There ain't no children nowhere, -that ain't worth more than anything else in the world all put together. No sir!" — From "The Confessions of a Daddy," by Ellis Parker Butler.