Life — November 30, 1928 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

SKIPPY’S Dear Sooxy: This morning I took a book under my arm an started for the woods, it was just that elegant an warm out that no one would ever believe it's the end of November. Walkin through the woods I had to stop to take in the sunbeams drippin through the trees. After that, I plowed on, shufilin up yellow leaves, bright as glitterin coins. If they was all gold, I thought, I'd be the richest man in the world, Even if they was I couldn't be any happier. Besides I had a chocolate almond bar tucked away in my back pocket. Never was it so quiet before, onty bird calls you could hear. For a long ume I looked up at the sky so high an blue— it set me to thinkin that if the world was upside down an I ever lost my footin, I'd swish through uce-tops an then go twirlin in emptiness forever an ever. So stiller an beautifuler it got, with trees an trees as far as I could see, that I couldn't go stampin an cracklin up the forest any more, It was like breakin the bric-a-brac on a church altar. I squatted in a bed of pine needles, an somehow or other got to thinkin about God. Lookin all around me I couldn’t help but see what a swell job he made of Nature. Even at that I didn’t want to pass on it without some sort of a tussle, so I began findin fault right an left. Supposin I had nothin on my mind but putterin, what would I do if some- Percy L. Crosby LETTERS body handed me a whole lot of nothin full of blue sky? I began to mull the ball over in my mind an the more I thought, | the more I began to agree with God. | It got so you couldn't tell our work apart. No use talkin, Sook, it was the very same kind of a job I'd turn out. No, sir, I wouldn’t even put one more notch in a leaf. Tt was just the kind of day that only me an God would be out in, so I made} up a game. I was to ask him questions an he was to answer them if he could. So I “God, why do you put limbs on the An I was sure I heard him say, “So squirrels ‘Il find their way around.” That didn’t seem like the right answer to me but I didn’t dare argue with God, Anyway, I was raisin my voice an scarin the chipmunks. Then I kept very quiet an tried to imagine myself as the only one left in the whole world, an I began to fill up. All around me I noticed dead leaves was fallin an fallin without a sound. Silent they come down with a gentle dip on one side an a floatin on the other—dippin an floatin they was, until they pattered on the ground. Maybe they was snugglin to make a quilt so’s the world would be warm till spring. Well, sizin it all up, I figured winter was comin with a bang. For the first time I looked at the book I had an I see it was “The Scarlet Letter.” I just felt like readin a football story, only I opened it up an sees pictures of pilgrims. I flipped the pages to another picture—more pilgrims. What kind of a story is this, I thought. Whoever heard of pilgrims havin a team. Well, I started readin anyway—I didn’t want it said that I never gave a book a break. Te was about a little girl named Pearl, who wouldn't come to her mother cause she ripped a letter off her chest an threw it in the brook. I figured that the mother must have been a basketball player, an perhaps she was throwin down her team. There was a minister who tried to put his two cents’ worth in too, an I thought they’d never finish thee-in an thow-in. You had to hand it to the kid though, she had lots of spirit an made her enother put the letter back on again. You couldn't help but like Pearl, Fire-Eater’s Wire: Now, Will, there’s no sense in flaring up over a little bill like that comicbooks.com