Metuchen Edison History Features

Recollections of

Boyhood Days

In Old Metuchen

By

David Trumbull Marshall

Published by The Case Publishing Co., Flushing NY 1930

(Second Edition)- (c) 1930

Fishing.

When I was a boy of five, together with my brother of four, between us we caught a fish about three inches long.

That was a red-letter day, sure enough.

We ran home and showed the fish to Mother and then proceeded to fry it on the kitchen range.

When the fish was cooked we sat down to a little table. My small brother said grace, as he had always seen my father do before meat.

While he was saying grace I ate up the fish.

I well remember catching the fish and frying it. The rest of the story is part of the family lore. I have completely forgotten that part.

I used to know a very devout Methodist who had a very long red beard. He had two little daughters. He used to say grace before eating. Sometimes his exhortations to the Lord to bless the food were so prolonged that his little daughter used to, after the good old Methodist fashion, say "Amen," then after an interval "Amen" again, and when she got really desperately hungry her "Amen" was shouted in a real camp-meeting voice. Whether she then got fed or spanked I do not know.

When I was in college the Glee Club was making a tour through New Jersey. The boys stopped one
night at a boarding house.

Some of the boys told the landlady that the most graceless scamp in the whole lot was a divinity student.
The next meal the landlady requested him to say grace. He told me that to save his life the only thing he could think of was the shortest verse in the bible, "Jesus wept." That he did say and saved the day.