A Plea for Old Cap Collier (in Short Nonfiction Collection Vol. 011 )

MP3 Audio CD. A Plea for Old Cap Collier (in Short Nonfiction Collection Vol. 011 )

For a good many years now I have been carrying this idea round with me.
It was more or less of a loose and unformed idea, and it wouldn't jell.
What brought it round to the solidification point was this: Here the
other week, being half sick, I was laid up over Sunday in a small hotel
in a small seacoast town. I had read all the newspapers and all the
magazines I could get hold of. The local bookstore, of course, was
closed. They won't let the oysters stay open on Sunday in that town. The
only literature my fellow guests seemed interested in was mailorder tabs
and price currents.

Finally, when despair was about to claim me for her own, I ran across an
ancient Fifth Reader, all tattered and stained and having that smell of
age which is common to old books and old sheep. I took it up to bed with
me, and I read it through from cover to cover. Long before I was through
the very idea which for so long had been sloshing round inside of my
head--this idea which, as one might say, had been aged in the wood--took
shape. Then and there I decided that the very first chance I had I would
sit me down and write a plea for Old Cap Collier.

In my youth I was spanked freely and frequently for doing many different
things that were forbidden, and also for doing the same thing many
different times and getting caught doing it. That, of course, was before
the Boy Scout movement had come along to show how easily and how sanely
a boy's natural restlessness and a boy's natural love for adventure may
be directed into helpful channels; that was when nearly everything a
normal, active boy craved to do was wrong and, therefore, held to be a
spankable offense.