Violets and Other Tales | Page 8

he was always
hungry, and would eat in school before the half-past ten intermission,
thereby losing much good play-time for his voracious appetite.
But there was nothing in natural history that Titee didn't know. He
could dissect a butterfly or a mosquito-hawk and describe their parts as
accurately as a spectacled student with a scalpel and microscope could
talk about a cadaver. The entire Third District, with its swamps and
canals and commons and railroad sections, and its wondrous, crooked,
tortuous streets was as an open book to Titee. There was not a nook or
corner that he did not know or could tell of. There was not a bit of
gossip among the gamins, little Creole and Spanish fellows, with dark
skins and lovely eyes like Spaniels, that Titee could not tell of. He

knew just exactly when it was time for crawfish to be plentiful down in
the Claiborne and Marigny canals; just when a poor, breadless fellow
might get a job in the big bone-yard and fertilizing factory out on the
railroad track; and as for the levee, with its ships and schooners and
sailors--Oh, how he could revel among them! The wondrous ships, the
pretty little schooners, where the foreign-looking sailors lay on long
moon-lit nights, singing gay bar carols to the tinkle of a guitar and
mandolin. All these things, and more, could Titee tell of. He had been
down to the Gulf, and out on its treacherous waters through Eads Jetties
on a fishing smack, with some jolly, brown sailors, and could interest
the whole school-room in the "talk lessons," if he chose.
Titee shivered as the wind swept round the freight cars. There isn't
much warmth in a bit of a jersey coat.
"Wish 'twas summer," he murmured, casting another sailor's glance at
the sky. "Don't believe I like snow, it's too wet and cold." And, with a
last parting caress at the little fire he had builded for a minute's warmth,
he plunged his hands in his pockets, shut his teeth, and started manfully
on his mission out the railroad track towards the swamps.
It was late when Titee came home, to such a home as it was, and he had
but illy performed his errand, so his mother beat him, and sent him to
bed supperless. A sharp strap stings in cold weather, and long walks in
the teeth of a biting wind creates a keen appetite. But if Titee cried
himself to sleep that night, he was up bright and early next morning,
and had been to early mass, devoutly kneeling on the cold floor,
blowing his fingers to keep them warm, and was home almost before
the rest of the family was awake.
There was evidently some great matter of business in this young man's
mind, for he scarcely ate his breakfast, and had left the table, eagerly
cramming the remainder of his meal in his pockets.
"I wonder what he's up to now?" mused his mother as she watched his
little form sturdily trudging the track in the face of the wind, his head,
with the rimless cap thrust close on the shock of black hair, bent low,
his hands thrust deep in the bulging pockets.

"A new snake, perhaps," ventured the father; "he's a queer child."
But the next day Titee was late for school. It was something unusual,
for he was always the first on hand to fix some plan of mechanism to
make the teacher miserable. She looked reprovingly at him this
morning, when he came in during the arithmetic class, his hair all
wind-blown, cheeks rosy from a hard fight with the sharp blasts. But he
made up for his tardiness by his extreme goodness all day; just think,
Titee didn't even eat in school. A something unparalleled in the entire
history of his school-life.
When the lunch-hour came, and all the yard was a scene of feast and
fun, one of the boys found him standing by one of the posts,
disconsolately watching a ham sandwich as it rapidly disappeared
down the throat of a sturdy, square-headed little fellow.
"Hello, Edgar," he said, "What yer got fer lunch?"
"Nothin'," was the mournful reply.
"Ah, why don't yer stop eatin' in school fer a change? Yer don't ever
have nothin' to eat."
"I didn't eat to-day," said Titee, blazing up.
"Yer did!"
"I tell you I didn't!" and Titee's hard little fist planted a punctuation
mark on his comrade's eye.
A fight in the school-yard! Poor Titee in disgrace again. But in spite of
his battered appearance, a severe scolding from the principal, lines to
write, and a further punishment from his mother, Titee scarcely
remained for his dinner, but was off, down the railroad track, with his
pockets partly stuffed with the remnants of his