QUEER TOM.



TOM FLOSSOFER is the queerest boy I ever knew. I do not think he ever cries. I never heard him cry. 

When anything goes wrong, instead of crying he whistles. 

One day when Tom came home from the express office, where he had been to get some packages for his father, his sister Fleda came running to meet him, crying as if her heart would break.

"O Tom," said she, "Fido has rooted up all my tulips;" and then she cried and cried, as little girls will. 

Tom felt sorry for her, but he only said,"What makes you cry? Can you cry tulips? Do you think that every sob makes a root or a blossom? Here! I'll give these packages to father, and then we'll try to right them."

So Tom picked up the poor flowers, put their roots into the ground again, whistling all the time, made the bed look smooth and fresh, and then took Fleda off to hunt hens' nests in the barn.

Neither did Tom do any differently in his own troubles. One day his great kite snapped the string and flew away far out of sight. He stood still a moment, and then turned around to come home, whistling a merry tune.

"Why, Tom," said I, "are you not sorry to lose that kite?"

"Yes, but what's the use? I can't take more than a minute to feel bad. 'Sorry' will not bring the kite back, and I want to make another."

It was just so when he broke his leg.

"Poor Tom!" cried Fleda; "you can't play any m-o-o-re! "

"I'm not poor, either. You cry for me; I don't have to do it for myself, and Ihave a splendid time to whistle. Besides, when I get well, I shall beat every boy in school on the multiplication-table, for I say it over and over till it makes me sleepy every time my leg aches."

Tom Flossofer is queer, certainly, but I wish a great many more people were queer in that way, don't you? 




Treasury.