Indiana University - Arbutus Yearbook (Bloomington, IN)

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jan ' whicli he wanted (she most often narrowing it down to make his choice easy), and he told her, and she told him to get to work and get it for himself, and he did, and surely enough, he always got it. One day Mrs. God-maninia put tliis terribly iiard young onion proposition before Johnny. She iiad a way, you know, of half-way directing Johnny ' s life by the (juestions she asked him. — or able to raise beautiful, delicious, yoinig onions? Johnny scratched his head furiously. It seems to me, he ventured, that that is a ciuestion which would take some intelligence to answer correctly. A fine answer, a mighty tine answer, complimented the mother. .She ilid not always e.xact a precise yes or no reply to her interrogations. ' hat am I going to do about it, then? asked Johnny blindly. Well, the thing for you to do is to go to school and keep on going to school and keep on going to school and keep on getting more and more intelligence until you can decide which you would rather be; ' ery, ' ery intelligent or able to raise the onions. So Johnny started into school. He went t(5 school, and went to school. J3ut he could not decide. Lots of times he forgot all about the question; yet, when he remembered it again, he still could not decide. He kept climbing up higher and higher until he was away up a junior or senior or some kind of post-graduate at a college. For a long time, the young onion side of the answer had appealed to him as ridiculous, but he was not sure and did not decide. Then he began to change, and one day he made up his mind; yes, sir, in favor of the young onions. He had had his eye on some very, very intelligent persons. L HINPL- P

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Dl€ JOHNNY f Against It WHICH would you rather be: very, very intelligent or able to raise beautiful, delicious, young onions? Surely, that was a hard question for a small bov to answer by himself without any help from his father or mother or brothers or sisters or aunts. But Johnny had just that e]uestion to answer. It was up to him, as they say in slang circles. He could not ignore the (juestion, and it was far from him to laugh at it and consider it absurd, as older folks would have done, ' du can not laugh at things in this world. Even the funny weekly is a serious matter when you get down to the meta- physics of it. Somehow Johnny was young enough to realize all this. I guess childhood is a good time because ciiildren take everything seriously and enjoy it instead of trying to sepa- rate their serious moments and their joy moments like grown- ups. So Johnny honestly and truly was up against it. Which would you rather be: very, very intelligent or able to raise beautiful, delicious, young onions? The way of it was this. Johnny Jenkweltner, to be short about it, had one of those wizard god-mammas who figure in fairy talcs and other useless literature. This is not a fairy yarn, however, so if you have whiskers as long as the finale of a comic opera, do not feel that you have to chuck this and scoot the red and yellow books over on the shelf in the nursery li- brary to make room for it. Really, Johnny ' s god-mamma was not what you would call a regular god-mamma. She had dif- ferent methods. She worked in a sensible manner. She did not say Hocus pocus and bring certain things to pass. This, rather, was Johnny Jenkweltner ' s wizard god-mamma ' s course of wonder working: she asked Johnny what he wanted or [■■■ii-i AF '

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ll HES WEI B AUBUTUS ini They buzzed around in the school where Johnny studied and tallied to each other over their tea and thin wafers about such and such an element in Ibsen, or the race problem on Mars, or the utilitarianism of consciousness. All that conversation bewildered Johnny the first time that he saw it changing hands on the campus. It dazzled him just as the fake fancy work on a circus wagon did tiie first time he saw a parade. He made up his mind to hang around the back yards of these intellectual mastodons and grab the crumbs that were swept out the back door. He resolved to stick about and get both ears crammed full. He worked hard at it, and actually became able, after lie had been in college a few years, to do the thing himself pretty well. He was making headway straight for the realm of the very, very intellectual. One day Johnny went down into a basement under a bank to get his shoes half-soled by a shoemaker who had iiis studio d(.) Mi there. As he went down the steps, his mind was op- pressed by the iiuestion of the adecjuacy of modern scientific methods of classification. He tripped, and fell down three or four stone steps. He did not hurt himself, but he was brought to realize that he possessed such a prosaic thing as a toe. He had stumped that toe, and it hurt. There is nothing theoretical about a hurting toe. Althougii tiie pain was brief, it served to jar Johnny ' s state of mind. He went down and sat in his stocking feet while the shoemaker fixed his shoes. The shoemaker said little, and he did not stop to write poetry about his joy, but Johnny could see it in his eye as he pounded tacks. Why not; he was doing his best to keep the human race from getting its feet wet? Then it was that Johnny decided to raise onions. If he could do something to get a joy-gleam like that in his own eye, it would be great. He decided that young onions were the thing. IIL .- i