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Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith, 1856-1923

"Story of Waitstill Baxter"

The word as near as I could ketch it
was 'youthinasia.' I kep' holt of it till noontime an' then I run
home an' looked through all the y's in the dictionary without
findin' it. Mebbe it's Hebrew, I thinks, for Hebrew's like his
mother's tongue to Parson, so I went right up to him at afternoon
meetin' an' says to him: 'What's the exact meanin' of
"youthinasia"? There ain't no sech word in the Y's in my
Webster,' says I. 'Look in the E's, Timothy; "euthanasia"' says
he, 'means easy death'; an' now, don't it beat all that Bill
Dunham should have brought that expression of 'easy death' into
this evenin's talk?"
"I know youth an' I know Ashy," said Abel Day, "but blessed if I
know why they should mean easy death when they yoke 'em
together."
"That's because you ain't never paid no 'tention to entomology,"
said Timothy. "Aaron Boynton was master o' more 'ologies than you
could shake a stick at, but he used to say I beat him on
entomology. Words air cur'ous things sometimes, as I know, hevin'
had consid'able leisure time to read when I was joggin' 'bout the
country an' bein' brought into contack with men o' learnin'. The
way I worked it out, not wishin' to ask Parson any more
questions, bein' something of a scholard myself, is this: The
youth in Ashy is a peculiar kind o' youth, 'n' their religion
disposes 'em to lay no kind o' stress on huming life.


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