Worcester Democrat And The Ledger Enterprise

Mary Graham Bonner THE ERASER

"I am almost nothing," said the eraser.

"What do you mean by that?" the pencil asked.

"Just what I said," the eraser answered.

"You never were very big," the pencil remarked.

"True," the eraser said, "but I amounted to more than I do now."

"I had a nice little place here at the end of you, Pencil, and I was a pretty good eraser."

"But now I have been rubbed down to almost nothing. That is what I meant when I said I was almost nothing."

"I understand," the pencil answered.

"You see," the eraser said, "I have been used so much. I couldn't keep in very good condition that way."

"Weren't you put there for use?" the pencil asked. "You weren't simply put there as an object of beauty, were you?"

"Now, don't be sarcastic, please," the eraser said. "I'm sad enough as it is."

"Of course I wasn't put here for beauty but for use, but I've been used almost too much—in fact I have been used too much."

"I'm all at loose ends. I'm shabby and worn. Bits of me are falling off and I can't stay in my little end place here very well."

"I keep falling out and have to be shoved back in again."

"I have been used so many times when I need not have been used."

"I have been used when a little thought would have saved me the effort and trouble."

"Not that I could have thought, but the one using me could have thought and that would have saved me."

"A mistake has been made and then I have been used to rub it out."

"Often that mistake would not have been made if a little thought had been used in the first place."

"Of course I'm willing enough to help about mistakes, but too much is too much."

"I suppose you're right," the pencil said.

"Well," the pencil added, "I've not always been treated as well as I might have been treated."

"I was a handsome pencil at one time, but I've been chewed and I've been bitten and I'm covered with teeth marks now. I'm rather shabby, too."

"Still, I heard one of the old pencils telling a little pencil family history."

" 'In the old days,' said this pencil, 'things were the same.'"

"'Some of the grown-ups will say to the children now that it is dreadful the way they stop and chew their pencils instead of getting on with their work, and they tell them that that is no way to think.'"

"'That is perfectly true of course but when they were young they often did the same thing, too.'"

"Oh, yes, if you go back far enough in pencil family history you will find that many a mother and father did the very same when they were young."

"That was what the old pencil told us," the young pencil said. "But still that doesn't really excuse matters."

"We should be treated a little better."

"I think so," the eraser said.

"But it won't do us much good to think so," the pencil remarked.

"Not much," agreed the eraser.

"There are troubles that come to all of us, I suppose," the pencil said.

"I suppose so," agreed the eraser once more.

"Life isn't all fun," the pencil said, and felt it had made a very smart remark. From having written the answers to so many questions and from having done so many sums the pencil felt it was quite smart.

"But I do feel sorry for myself particularly," the eraser ended, "as I'm almost nothing now."

And that was really perfectly true. There was very little left of the poor little eraser and what was left didn't amount to much.