5. Papa’s Young Protégé

My little brother, Clyde, suffered a painful accident that spring. He had never been a very healthy child: he was subject to severe attacks of indigestion that would put him to bed for days on end.

On this occasion, late in May, the seizure brought on convulsions, quite frightening to behold. Good old Doctor Engle had gone on a long trip into the country. Mama was beside herself with helpless grief, and while she knelt to weep and pray some neighbor woman thought a very hot bath might help the unconscious little boy. The woman heated a wash boiler full of water, and lowered my brother into it. The boiler had a thick copper bottom, but Clyde did not. When they lifted him out, the poor little fellow’s buttocks and heels had been burned to the bone.

It was long before the remedies were discovered which come to the aid of such misfortunes. Little Clyde was very ill all summer. Lou did the housework. Mama gave her full attention to my brother whose only moments of freedom from pain were invoked by sedatives. After I had tiptoed about the house for a few days, Papa decided that it would be better for me, and the household too, if he took me along with him on his pastoral errands in the country. I felt quite important, sitting beside my papa in our secondhand buggy. Our elderly horse knew better than to overexert himself on a hot day.

Papa talked about the growing crops, always waved his tall plug hat to farmers cultivating corn; and, if they were close to the “stake-and-rider” rail fence, he would stop for a chat. He knew almost all of them by their first names.

One day, when we hadn’t talked for a while, I asked him if Greek was a difficult language to learn. I knew he liked Greek, for he often looked up a word in the lexicon he had used in college.

“It is a beautiful language,” he said. “Want to learn the Greek alphabet? It might be fun for you.”

I told him I should like that, if he thought I was old enough. And he said that many boys much younger than I had studied Greek. Anyway, the alphabet was easy. The first letter was “alpha.”

“Like in our word ‘alphabet’?” I inquired.

“Exactly!” said Papa. “That’s where our word ‘alphabet’ came from. And the second Greek letter is ‘beta.’

“Is that where we get the ‘bet’ in ‘alphabet’?” I asked, with mounting interest.

“Of course!” Papa replied, pleased by my enthusiasm. “We speak of learning our ‘A B C’s.’ The Greeks meant the same thing when they spoke of their ‘alphabet.’

“Did their third letter begin with ‘C’?” I wondered.

No; this one wasn’t quite so easy. The third Greek letter was “gamma,” corresponding to our “G.” But I was not discouraged. It was an interesting game to play. Papa recited the whole alphabet, and it was no time at all until I could rattle off at least half of it.