MOLES
UNCLE NED he said: “Johnny, you have pained me by your indifference to the mole. I can only lay it to your ignance, cause maybe you don’t know there is such a feller.”
Then I spoke up and said: “The mole is amphibious and lives in the ground. It hasent got any eyes, but its nose is like a awger, cause it can bore through the solid rock and come out on the other side and holler hooray! The fur of the mole is slick and shiny and makes good mufs. Girls wears mufs but boys is kings and can stand on their head. Girls is cry babys, and if I was a girl I rather be a fellers wife and roar like distant thunder.”
Then Uncle Ned he said: “Johnny, I see that I was mistook. You are not ignant about moles, and you are mighty well informed about girls. My charge of indifference arose out of the fact that you never asked me why the mole doesnt come out of the ground for to bask in the light of day and survey mankind with comperhensive view. I should think a bright, scientificle boy like you would want to know that,same as to learn why the beaver has a flat tail, and how the cammle got his hunch and what makes the buttigoat have whiskers.”
I asked him why was it, and he said: “Thats what I knocked off work a plantin potatoes, to come in and tell you, for knowlidge is power.
“One time Adam he was a diggin post holes in the Garden of Eden, when the mole it come along and said good mornin, cause the mole it was created real sociable. Adam he was grouchy, cause Eve had sassed him, and he dident say any thing. Then the mole said: 'If I was give dominion over ol the beasts of the field, as you be, I wouldnt be diggin holes, Ide make the woodchuck do it for me, which is more skillfle.’
“That made Adam furious, like he was a wet cat, and he said: 'I dont want advice from any gun dasted squirel of the air.’ So he catched the mole and flang it in to the post hole which he had dugged, and said: 'Ile be gam doodled if I dont burry you alive for your impidence!’
“Then he begun for to fill up the hole, and the mole it spoke up real solemn and said: 'Ime laid here in the shure and certain hope of a blessed resuraction.’
“But Adam he said: 'That hope will be blasted. You shant ever arise from the dead till Gabrial blows his horn and eccho ansers from the hill.’
“And, Johnny, thats why the mole, which tils the soil real industrious, never comes up for to view the land scape oer.”
One day Billy he come home a holdin up a mole by the tail, which some boy had give him, and the mole it was a live.
When my mother she see him she said: “O you cruel, cruel boy! Throw it in the fire this minute!”
One Sunday Mister Pitchel, thats the preacher, he was to our house, and mother she read out of a paper about Doctor Tanner, which didn’t eat any thing for 40 days, and she said, mother did: “Stuff and non sense, he would have died.”
Father he said: “I dont know about that. Bears stay in hollow trees all winter and live by suckin their feets.”
Mister Pitchel he thought a while, and bime by he looked up at the ceilin a while, real sollemn, and then he said: “There was a greater than Docktor Tanner, and He fasted forty days and forty nights in the wildness. Does any of you know whatit was which sustained Him?”
Then Billy he spoke up real quick and said: “Sucked his feets!”