. The fountain of youth. ing the tree frog would beback on the rain barrel yelling loud as ever. Then there was another old bullfrog that usedto live under the split pirogue that served as asidewalk, placed upside down, from the gallerieto the big cistern. The only time one used thiswas when the weather was wet and then it wasso slippery that a man couldnt keep a footing,but whenever one did step on the shell, the bigbullfrog boomed out menacingly. Len, after the peace of the tree frogs exile,mellowed a bit on his family. Heres my boy,Hubert, he does hate whiskey. Some folks won-der how we can
. The fountain of youth. ing the tree frog would beback on the rain barrel yelling loud as ever. Then there was another old bullfrog that usedto live under the split pirogue that served as asidewalk, placed upside down, from the gallerieto the big cistern. The only time one used thiswas when the weather was wet and then it wasso slippery that a man couldnt keep a footing,but whenever one did step on the shell, the bigbullfrog boomed out menacingly. Len, after the peace of the tree frogs exile,mellowed a bit on his family. Heres my boy,Hubert, he does hate whiskey. Some folks won-der how we can raise a smartable boy like himdown in these swamps, but talk about city edu-cation! Why, here he grows clean and sweet,and his mother teaches him to read and says his prayers at night, and when BrotherMetreve comes in his gas boat once a monthfrom Happy Land, there aint nobody listensto the Word like my boy Hubert. He feels badbecause old Fitzandes kids dont pray, and Iheard him once just beg Francois to say a. THE WATERHOUSE BOYS 217 j)rayer in Cajun. I guess, says Hubert,that God knows some Cajun. Hubert, a brown-eyed, gentle lad, like allthese woods youngsters, carried in his stovewood, chased the pigs out of the house lot, andsailed his little self-made boats on the floodponds. My heart went out to him as to all thesebrave, simple, and efficient children of the wil-derness. Hubert knew all the Grand Riverboats—he could tell miles away by the exhaustor the whistle just whether it was the Queenieor the River Belle, and what cargo she wouldlikely carry. He was a slim young nimrod. Inthe dried swamps of autumn he and Len hunteddeer and squirrel, and in the wintei the ducksand water fowl to ship out to the New Orleansmarkets. Then in the spring, when the suncreeps high over the land and sends the meltedsnows down the Mississippi to crash through theRed and Atchafalaya, short-cutting to the sea,Len and his boy Hubert bush-catted and ranthe drift logs until the July s
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookidfountainofyouth00jack
