Tommy Atkins was not a British soldier in a red coat and a smart forage-cap, jauntily swinging a two-foot stick as he walked along, but a little red-cheeked country lad away up in Maine.
Tommy was just an every-day little chap, with no wits to spare when it was a matter of parsing and writing compositions at school, but a smart enough lad for the ordinary purposes of life. He was original, too, in his way, as you will see, but deplorably matter-of-fact, and he took at least two days to see a joke.
One day, just before school broke up for the summer vacation, Tommy’s teacher, a bright-faced woman whom Tommy secretly adored, made this announcement:
“Children, the pupils of this grade are extremely deficient in composition. To correct this and pave the way for more earnest work next year, I will assign you a task for the va- cation, for which I will offer a prize.”
A murmur of curiosity and excitement passed through the room. A prize! A prize! Tommy’s fat cheeks bulged more than ever as he shut his lips firmly.
“The prize will be”—Miss Sanderson paused impressively and each boy held his breath—“a year’s subscription to St. Nicholas. I expect each pupil, even the youngest, to write an original composition, not to exceed two hundred words, and to present the same at my desk on September first next; and in order to stimulate your powers of observation, and to keep you in touch with nature study, I shall ask you to write a composition on an apple.”
“An apple—that’s easy,” whispered Johnny Dale, again, A shade of scorn, even, passed over the face of Harold Ball, the head boy, who, upon occasion, could write verse that sounded like Casabianca.
“An apple—a composition on an apple,” pondered Tommy Atkins over and over all the way home. He could not see the simplicity of the theme; in fact, he could not even get it through his little thick head how the thing could be done at all.
“Not more than two hundred words on an apple! I guess not,” reflected Tommy.
“What is the subject?” asked his mother, on hearing of the competition and prize.
“I dunno,” said Tommy ; “I did n’t hear her say. But it ’s got to he on an apple.”
Tommy worried a good deal about the competition during early vacation-time.
But one day, as he lay in the long grass of the orchard, idly watching the green globes and gray-green leaves of the sturdy old apple-trees above him, a bright idea came into his head. He saw at last how it could be done; he even decided upon the subject, which Miss Sanderson had apparently forgotten to mention, and the very words it should contain.
That night, when the chores were done, Tommy hunted up a sheet of writing-paper and his mother’s sharpest scissors. His hand was ever more nimble than his wits, and with great neatness and dexterity he drew and erased and clipped away until presently he had a pile of little paper letters. During this process he sniffed and squirmed and wriggled, after the fashion of active boys when engaged in a close piece of work; but at last the work was
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