If I couldn't have
a big laugh, now and then, I'd feel that I ought to consult a
physician. My boys and girls and I often laugh together, but never
at one another. Sant had a deal of fun with my propensity to laugh.
When we were conning our geography lesson, he would make puns upon
such names as Chattahoochee and Appalachicola, and I would promptly
explode. Then, enter the teacher. But I drop the mantle of charity
over the next scene, for his school-teaching was altogether personal,
and not pedagogical. He didn't know that puns and laughter were the
reactions on the part of us boys that caused us to know the facts of
the book. But he wanted us to learn those facts in his way, and not
in our own. Poor fellow! _Requiescat in pace_, if he can.
Sant was the first one of our crowd to go to college, and we were all
proud of him, and predicted great things for him. We all knew he was
brilliant and felt certain that the great ones in the college would
soon find it out. And they did; for ever and anon some news would
filter through to us that Sant was battening upon Latin, Greek,
mathematics, science, and history.
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