Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/289

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faculties, I think, broodin' on her diseases, and then half the time she thinks she is a female Amazon. And how I do pity little Jack! Tamer kep' the best sort of clothes on him, dressed and fed him jest as well as a child could be, only when she wuz down with the most curiousest of her diseases, or in one of her tempers.

But while, as I have said, she took good care of his body, oh! how she neglected and misused the mind, the heart, the imagination, the true life of little Jack, misused it like a dog. She would fly at him and whip him unmercifully for what he wuzn't to blame for, and then set over one of her novels and let him go on with what he ort to have been stopped doin'. To use the words of another, she let him do the things he ortn't to do and whipped him for what he ort. Her mind wuz such.

Now, to give a sample of her onjestice, the very next day after I wuz there Jack wuz sent to a neighbor's on a errent. His mother told him to go cross lots, she wuz in such a hurry to have her errent done she didn't give him enough particulars about the way, and when the poor little creeter wuz doin' jest the best he could and hurryin' on jest as near as he could where his Ma told him to go, he got into a swampy place and got his best clothes all dirty and wuz too late to do his errent.

Tamer Ann wanted to send by the neighbor to the city where he wuz goin' for a certain new blood curdlin' novel, jest issued, and, owin' to Jack's misfortune in losin' his way when he got there, the man wuz gone. And when poor Jack come meachin' home with his nice cothes all muddy and wet, as forlorn lookin' a little creeter as I ever see, Tamer wuz voylently mad about his clothes, and when he said (for Jack is naturally truthful)