Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 145: what you’re looking at

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

Four of Them Were Foolish II i LABAN HULBERT had the best ES 2 farmin the town. On a gentle.gouth —— slope, its four hundred acres had been cleared of stump and stone by three generations until it spread sleek and green, or gorgeously red-black where turned by the plow. : In Laban’s youth, with six sons to help his father, every square rod had been under cultivation save the great maples of the sugar bush on the upland, and where the white pines by the. river furnished fuel and building-material. Today cattle grazed where once tasseled corn waved or Winter wheat rippled. Hulbert put down five or sIx acres to potatoes and his truck garden was noted; but he had ceased to be a pro- ducer in any large way. He was a widower, and his niece Eunice, the orphan of a favorite sister, kept house for him. The third member of the house- hold was his son Louis, an idiot with a vast, amorphous body-and the mind of a four- year-old child. Lou was harmless, generally speaking, though subject to fits of temper like any child, but rendered appalling by his great strength. He could dress and feed himself, was devoted to his father and cousin, and a faithful worker within his very narrow lim- its. Set to digging a well, he would have kept on until lost to sight in the hole, unless told to stop. Put to milking, he had to be watched because he would have kept stead- ily on long after the udders were drdined. He could distinguish between weeds and vegetables, and was a tireless worker at such simple tasks as he could be trusted with; but no sharp tool was ever put into his hands. He was an enormous creature, weighing more than three hundred pounds, and seem- ing to be soft and flabby, but actually en- dowed with the uncanny strength that Nature often bestows as a compensation upon her insane or feeble-minded children. He never left the boundaries of the Hulbert farm and was seldom out of sight of the house. Spike Halloran’s four beauties never had seen him near at hand, but they often caught sight of his grotesque hulk plodding about some homely task in the distance, and joked about the “nut.” : Farmer Hulbert had soberly warned them on their arrival never to plague or tease Lou. 135 “He ain’t responsible,” he said. ‘‘Gentle as a kitten, but spunky. Don’t know his own strength. I don’t want none of ye hurted. Can’t have no suit for damages on my hands. SolIwarn ye. Let him be, and he’ll do.the same.” The quartet were highly tickled by the speech. Teasing an idiqt did not in the least appeal to any of them as an indoor or outdoor sport; but the thought of the poor nut doing them any harm struck them as. ludicrous. They rocked back and forth about their camp-fire that night as they im- itated Hulbert’s solemn warning. Their great muscles flexed, their ‘iron hands clenched, a_ half-humorous, _half-sinister light twinkled in their eyes. Andy alone felt a little fear of the unfor- tunate. His great, expressionless face, like a mass of dough with currants stuck in for eyes and a little hole for a mouth, not un- like the crude modeling of a kitchen artist, his blubbering efforts to speak, his uncanny appetite especially, stirred‘ the superstition never far below the Afric skin. “Hungry is what dat Lou ain’t nothin’ but!” he remarked in his musical drawl. ‘‘Ah seen him eat, when Ah goes up to git algs an’ garden sass foh you-all. Lan’ knows you eats nuff, but you’se sickly; pears like, ’sides what dat Lou done put in- side hisself. ’Tain’t nacheral, nohow)” It was even as Andy said. : The Hulbert table, bountiful with the wholesome largess of the season, provided him with more and better food than he could have bought for ten dollars a day in the city. No limit was set to his desires, yet no one had ever seen him when he was not willing and able to eat a little more. One day after having devoured some five or six pounds of corned beef, cabbage and the other fixings of a New England boiled dinner, topped off with half a hot apple pie and a pitcher of milk, he was noticed by his father to have seated himself on the kitchen door-step in the sun. Beside him in a pail stood the parings of the potatoes they had eaten for dinner, ready to be carried te the pigs. Lou’s great flabby hand by chance touched the mass of raw peelings. Idly he plucked one and put it in his mouth, munching it abstractedly. It tasted good; he took another, and an- other. Whilg,;Hulbert watched, he slowly and methodically ate the entire pailful, sighed, and yawned contentedly. COmiclboo CN Vp) CO