e. They were _Stanley's
Adventures in Africa_, Dr. Kane's Book of _Polar Explorations_, _Mungo
Park_, and, most amazing of all, a huge, sensational book called _Savage
Races of the World_ ... this title was followed by a score of harrowing
and sensational sub-titles in rubric. I revelled and rolled in this book
like a colt let out to first pasture. For days and nights, summer and
winter, I fought, hunted, was native to all the world's savage regions
in turn, partook gleefully of strange and barbarous customs, naked and
skin-painted. I pushed dug-outs and canoes along tropic water-ways where
at any moment an enraged hippopotamus might thrust up his snout and
overturn me, crunching the boat in two and leaving me a prey to
crocodiles ... I killed birds of paradise with poison darts which I blew
out of a reed with my nostrils ... I burned the houses of white settlers
... even indulged shudderingly in cannibal feasts.
The one thing that pre-eminently seized my imagination in _Savage Races
of the World_ was the frontispiece,--a naked black rushing full-tilt
through a tropical forest, his head of hair on fire, a huge
feather-duster of dishevelled flame ... somehow this appealed to me as
especially romantic. I dreamed of myself as that savage, rushing
gloriously through a forest, naked, and crowned with fire like some
primitive sun-god. It never once occurred to me how it would hurt to
have my hair burning!
* * * * *
When Aunt Millie was taken down with St. Vitus's dance, it afforded me
endless amusement. She could hardly lift herself a drink out of a full
dipper without spilling two-thirds of the contents on the ground.
Uncle Beck, the Pennsylvania Dutch country doctor who married Aunt
Alice, came driving in from Antonville, five miles away, once or twice a
week to tend to Millie, free, as we were too poor to pay for a doctor. I
remember how Uncle Beck caught me and whipped me with a switch. For I
constantly teased Aunt Millie to make her scream and cry.
* * * * *
"Granma," I used to call out, on waking in the morning....
"Yes, Johnnie darling, what is it?"
"Granma, yesterday ... in the woods back of Babson's barn, I killed
three Indians, one after the other." (The funny part of it was that I
believed this, actually, as soon as the words left my mouth.)
A silence....
"Granma, don't you believe me?"
"Yes, of course, I believe you."
Aunt Mil
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