THE CONFESSIONS OF A DADDY
By Ellis Parker Butler
With illustrations by Fanny Y. Cory
New York The Century Co.
1907
TO
ELSIE McCOLM BUTLER A VERY GOOD CHILD THIS BOOK ISINSCRIBED BY HER FATHER
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
On the Floor With Her Stockings Not on Yet.
She Was Like a Butterfly in Amongs theButterflies.
The Two Children Run to the Gate.
She Wouldn't Keep Still a Minute
The Sobbin' Got Weaker and Weaker
THE CONFESSIONS OF A DADDY
I. OUR NEIGHBORS' BABIES
I guess we folks that live up at our end of town think we are about asgood as anybody in Colorado, and mebby a little better. We get alongtogether as pleasant as you please, and we are a sort of colony, as youmight say, all by ourselves.
Me and Marthy make especial good neighbors. We don't have no fights withthe other folks in our end of town, and in them days the neighbors hadn'tany reason to fight with us, for we didn't keep a dog and we hadn't nochildren! I take notice that it is other folks dogs and children that makemost of the bad feelin's between neighbors. Of course we had mosquitos,but Providence gives everybody something to practise up their patience,and when me and Marthy sat out on our porch and heard other people'schildren frettin' because the mosquitos was bad, we just sat there behindour screened porch and thanked our stars that we did n't have no childrento leave our screen doors open.
It was n't but right that me and Marthy should act accordingly. I don'tmean that we were uppish about it, but we did feel that we could live alittle better than our neighbors that had all the expense of children, andif our house was fixed up a little better, and we was able to go off threeor four weeks in the summer to the mountains, when all the rest stayedright at home, we had a right to feel pleased about it. Lots of times wehad things our neighbors could n't afford, and then the little woman wouldsay to me: “