Your ShelfYour Projects

STRETCHING THINGS

4%

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, May 12, 1885

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 19

Read the full edition

STRETCHING THINGS.

“I'm almost dead! It is as hot as fire, and I've run more than a dozen miles after that colt!”
He threw himself at full length on the ground and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
“Where did you go?” inquired the father.
“I went over to Briggs's corner and back by the road.”
“It is a little less than a mile and a half. Is it warm, Andy? It seems quite cool here.”
“It's not so dreadful, I suppose, if I'd take it easy; but I ran like lightning, and got heated.”
“You started about five o'clock, my son, and now it's a quarter of six,” said the father, consulting his watch.
“Why, just three quarters of an hour,” answered Andrew, innocently.
“Does it take lightning forty-five minutes to go a mile and a half?”
“I didn't mean exactly that, father; but I ran away, because I expected the whole town here to-night to see my new velocipede,” said Andrew, reluctantly.
“Whom did you expect, Andy? I wasn't aware that such a crowd would be here. What will you do with them all?”
“Eddie, and Tim told me they'd be 'round soon, and I wouldn't wonder if Ike came, too, after all.”
“The population of the town is five thousand, and I expect three persons. Well, as you are here, I am glad no more are coming. You can play with them all.”
“What!” cried Andrew, springing to his feet; “did I say I was sick?”
“Andrew, you said you were almost dead. Does that mean very sick?”
“You are so particular, father, about my talking. I don't mean exactly what I say, of course. I was nearly dead, to be sure; but I did some running, you bet. There were more than fifty dogs after me, and I don't go much on dogs.”
“A band of them! Where did they all come from?”
“There were Mr. Wheeler's sheep-dog, and a store dog, and two or three more; and they came at me, and so I ran as fast as I could.”
“At the most, and not fifty, Andrew.”
“He looked to be fifty, anyway,” answered Andrew, somewhat impatiently. “Carter's ten-acre lot was full of dogs just making for me; and you'd have thought that there were fifty if you'd seen me.”
“Ten acres of dogs would be a great many thousands. Have you any idea how many?”
Andrew did not like to calculate, for it occurred to him what a small space ten or fifteen thousand sheep would occupy when camping, and ten acres of dogs would be past calculation.
“But,” his father continued, “I know of no better way to break you of the foolish habit of exaggeration than to tell the children of the trouble you had in going after the colt. You ran like lightning, encountered ten acres of dogs, which would be hundreds of thousands, traveled more than a dozen miles to get one and a half miles in a straight line, expected to find five thousand people here to examine your new velocipede, and when you reached home you were nearly dead!”
“Please don't, father; the boys and girls will all laugh themselves to death; and I won't exaggerate any more, if I live to be as old as Methuselah!”
“Laugh themselves to death at a simple story like this? I hope not, but rather hope it will set them to watching their own manner of telling stories, so as to be sure they do not greatly overstate things. Habit, my son, grows with years, and becomes in time so deeply rooted that it will be impossible for you, when you become a man, to relate plain, unvarnished facts, unless you check the foolish habit in which you indulge every day of stretching simple incidents into the most marvelous tales.”
—Christian Neighbor.