480 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
[November, 
A Lantern to Liig'ht His Way. 
There is something frank and generous in the very ap¬ 
pearance of large, well-formed, deep-colored, matured 
pumpkins. They have not the delicate bloom upon their 
cheeks that we find on the peach; they do not hang in 
graceful clusters, as do the sweet and juicy grapes,but they 
have an important place to fill in the list of farmer’s fruits. 
Though coarse and unpleasant to the taste when “ eaten 
from the vines” (?) the pumpkin is not beneath the no¬ 
tice of the boys of the country. Plant no pumpkin seeds, 
and let no vines run among the corn, and you surely take 
from the country youth a source of autumn pleasure that 
jack-knife with some dexterity. George and I—whom 
you may remember went after the squirrels and fell asleep 
in the woods—were the architects of the “Lantern” in 
question. It was made from the best pumpkin that a 
ten-acre field of corn could afford—it was not the largest, 
a,s that would have been too big, and we could not have 
handled it so well—but was of fine shape and had a 
smooth skin and a thick rind that made it valuable. It 
was made with no great care, only that the face was to 
be, as we called it, “outlandish.” We wanted it to be 
“ the worst-looking ‘ Lantern ’ that you ever saw.” Well, 
I guess we succeeded, and when the candle was put in 
and lighted, its face, though radiant with a “ warmth of 
footsteps of the Morgan horse. How funny we all felt 
behind that barrel, almost holding our breaths and fearing 
it might be some one else, that we would not care to see, 
or have see us. But everything was well for us, and 
shortly the boy, thoughtless of surrounding preparations 
for him, and possibly deep in some algebraic problem, 
and the lazy horse, reached the point opposite us. George 
wished to turn the “Lantern” upon him just before he 
got to us, but that would not have done, as the horse, slow 
and lazy as he was, might have wheeled and thrown the 
young rider. All we wished to do was to speed him on 
his homeward way. We threw off the blindfold, and gave 
the pumpkin a half turn, and—and—I do not think we 
HOW THE BOYS WITH THE P U M P K I N - L A N T E R N LIGHTED THEIR FRIEND ON HIS WAY. 
nothing else can replace. It hardly need be said that I 
now refer to the “Pumpkin Lantern,”or “Jack-Lan¬ 
tern,” as it is frequently called. What boy of any con¬ 
siderable size has not seen one of these truly mirth- 
provoking things I Yes! What boy has not found himself 
watching, day by day, some early pumpkin which he 
has in some way marked for his own—and a little later 
has made his jack-knife do its artistic work in chiselling 
out the astonishing mouth with its double row of notches ! 
Who has not rimmed and gouged away at the irregular 
eyes—and by removing a three-cornered piece of the 
“ shell,” made the organ of smell ? What boy has not 
had desperate failures in trying to make a fine, noble¬ 
looking face, or perhaps has more frequently tried to imi¬ 
tate rather the countenance of some person whom he 
has seen, and thought peculiar in some part of the face. 
A crooked nose is often exaggerated, and if the mouth 
is large, or small, it can be easily made larger or smaller. 
I do not remember the first time I made a “Jack- 
Lantern,” and I have no recollection of what became of it 
after it was made ; it probably was a sorry imitation of 
some human face and the pumpkin was doubtless a small, 
green one, as such can be easier cut, and earlier in the 
season. Whatever the first one may have been, I remem¬ 
ber one that “ we boys ”—it was a partnership concern- 
made when I was old enough to own and handle a good 
expression,” as artists might say, in beauty it was far 
inferior to that of a wax doll. We had often made “ Lan¬ 
terns” before, and had frequently shown them unexpect¬ 
edly to each other, and made them call on the older mem¬ 
bers of the household, just when they did not expect a 
visitor at the door—or suddenly let the bright-eyed, great¬ 
mouthed monster glance in at the open window when all 
else was darkness within and without. 
Now, we did not have any dislike to neighbor Morgan’s 
oldest boy; he was “ one of us ” on many a play day; but 
as things were arranged, he knew nothing of the “Jack- 
Lantern ” which George and I had made. The Morgan 
boy attended school at the village academy—we didn’t— 
and went to and from home on horseback. We knew 
about the lime he returned, and the thought struck us— 
I do not recollect which was struck first—that it would 
be a good thing for the Morgan boy, to stir him and his 
horse up a little, as he (the boy) was altogether too slow on 
his way home,thus avoiding some chores that would other¬ 
wise naturally fall to him. The “ Lantern ” was too 
heavy for us to hold in our hands, so we found an old 
barrel near by, which we placed upon the roadside—it 
was already dusk—and rested the “Jack” upon it, with 
its face toward the fence, and blindfolded with a cloth. 
Soon after the candle had got to burning nicely, and the 
darkness had settled upon all things, we heard the slow 
shouted, but it may be we did, but the Morgan boy had 
something to say, and as for the horse—he was busy with 
his legs, and more so than he had been for many a day. 
The surprise was not great euough to frighten the boy 
off of his horse, as it might have done, and we are glad it 
did not; but it gave new life to the burden-bearing ani¬ 
mal that did not die out until the rider was carried to the 
horse’s stable door. I picked up the fallen hat, and 
trotted on far behind, and took it to its owner ; it giving 
me an opportunity to tell him that nothing mean was in¬ 
tended-only a little fun—just wanted to light him home, 
as it were, for the night was a dark one. The Morgan 
boy was invited to our house on the next Saturday, and 
we all hands talked the matter over, and came to the 
conclusion that it might have been much worse. Re¬ 
volving lights along the sea coast are now frequently 
used to keep vessels from running into danger; but a 
revolving “ Jack-Lantern ’’—one that turns upon a bar¬ 
rel head, in the hands of mischivous boys, even 
though they are all in fun, when used to light up a safe 
place in a common road, may in itself be the source of 
anything than safety. Having had the experience, I give 
it, with the accompanying engraving, sketched from 
memory, not to encourage the young readers to do the 
same, but rather to show them in a pleasant way, at least 
one thing that had better be left undone. Uncle Hal. 
