Judge — August 8, 1903 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Iustrated by C. J. TAYLOR. | RECKON,” said Mr. Meddergrass, reflect- ively, pulling up a stalk of timothy and biting it; “I reckon about the best way of purtectin’ a watermelon-patch was invented by old man Fosdyke, over by Clifton, last year. Has anybody told you about it? No? Well, mebbe it would interest you, at any rate. “Old man Fosdyke had put out his lower thirty in watermelons, an’ the vines come up somethin’ fine. There wasn’t no patch in Greene county that could touch ‘em, an’ everybody was a-envyin’ Fosdyke—specially quite a number o' the colored population. You know, a darkey will walk forty miles in his bare feet, an’ climb through ten miles o' barb wire an‘nettles on the way, if he’s goin’ to wind up in a melon-patch. Well, along about the time old man Fosdyke’s melons begun to git ripe Shelt Podmore an’ ‘Lije Johnson, two o' the most hopeless water- melon-slaves in the county, seemed to find that Fosdyke patch a mighty handsome place to look at. Two o' the Fosdyke boys took turns about watchin’ the melons, but Shelt an’ 'Lije would come over to the shanty where the boys stayed an’ talk to ‘em about hayin’ an’ corn-cuttin’, an’ th’ chanst o' gittin’ a job diggin’ potaters later on, an’ all the time they was just a-droolin’ an’ a-lookin’ hungry at them melons. Oncet in a while one o' them would walk over toa melon an’ plunk it with his fingers an’ say that they was sho'ly lookin’ fine an’ had oughter be a-gittin’ ripe now purty soon, “Well, the Fosdyke boys they told their paw, o' course, an’ old man Fosdyke he was hard put to it to figger out some way to save his “They wanted to be saved." melons. Now, if you got a watermelon-patch an’ a passel o’ darkeys to watch at one an’ the same time, you're goin’ to be kept purty busy, I can tell you. An’ when, as happened in this case, the Ebenezer blue-light con- gtegation o' Afro-'merican saints organ- izes a camp-meetin’ an’ holds it about a quarter of a mile from your melon-patch, why, it certainly begins to look as if you'd have your hands full watchin’ the happenin’s 0’ the times in order to save your melons while they was a-savin’ sinners. “So old man Fosdyke, he thought an’ thought about the matter, but be- yond adoptin’ the good old shot-gun policy he couldn't git’ no further with his plans fer purtectin’ the crop. Well, along about that time he had Oscar Hitterfield out a-paintin’ his winder- “ Fixin’ up the pigs.” blinds an‘ techin’ up the house a little, an’ he got to talkin’ to Oscar one day about the melons an’ the camp-meetin’ an’ the general syn= chronousness an’ consanguinity, you might say, o' the camp-meetin’ bein’ held just at the time the melons would git ripe, an’ also held so blamed handy to the patch. So Oscar he give the matter some thought, an’ one day, when he was a-paintin’ on the shutters, he got a idee. So he tells old man Fosdyke about it, an’ it struck him all of a heap. That aft- ernoon they got the boys to go out an’ catch an’ tie about a dozen shoats, The boys did that, an’ brought the shoats up to the barn, an’ Oscar took a bucket o' green paint an’ work- ed all the rest o’ the day fixin’ up the pigs, stripin’ ‘em, an’ makin’ 'em look as watermelony as a pig could look. Then they ontied the pigs an’ let ‘em go. The shoats had a big waller jest at the side o' the melon-patch, an’ they liked to git over among the vines an’ root an’ grunt an’ lay around an’ think, like a hog does most o' the time when it hain’t doin’ nothin’ else. “That night along comes this here Shelt Podmore an’ 'Lije John- son an’ one or two others, projectin’ around the melon-patch. The melons was a-gittin’ ripe an’ juicy. That afternoon old man Fosdyke had busted one o' them open, an’, sir, it was as red inside as a rose, an’ blame near as sweet, or sweeter, you might say. I helped to eat it, an’ I ought to know. So Shelt an’ 'Lije an‘ the fellers what was with ‘em, they clum over the fence from the camp-meetin’ side an* begun movin’ around, tryin’ to pick out some ripe melons. It was a nice moonlight night—it always is durin’ camp-meetin’, you know— an’ they could see as plain as day; but of course they could also be seen, an’ so they kind o’ crawled along clost to the ground, an’ sort o’ felt their way to the melons. Purty soon we—me an’ Oscar an’ old man Fosdyke an’ the boys was a-hidin’ where we could see the fun that night—purty soon we heard this Podmore darkey say, ‘My Lawdy! I got a big one!’ an’ then we saw him rise up with one o' them painted shoats in his arms, an’ then that shoat woke up an’ squealed an’ wriggled loose. It didn’t have to try very hard to git away, ‘cause Shelt he let out a yell you could ‘a’ heard from here to Mitchell's saw- mill, an’ jest threw his arms up in the air an’ hollered fer mercy, an’ the shoat fell onto the gvound an’ started’ like a streak o’ greased lightnin’ over to’ards one o’ the others what was jest a-pickin’ up a melon, It was a real melon, but jest when he took holt of-it—anether shoat jumped up beside “ An’ hollered fer mercy.” comicbooks.com