The
wooden pistol never knew the light of day, save when Penrod was
in solitude; and yet it never left his side except at night, when
it was placed under his pillow. Still, it did not satisfy; it was
but the token of his yearning and his dream. With all his might
and main Penrod longed for one thing beyond all others. He wanted
a Real Pistol!
That was natural. Pictures of real pistols being used to
magnificently romantic effect were upon almost all the billboards
in town, the year round, and as for the "movie" shows, they could
not have lived an hour unpistoled. In the drug store, where
Penrod bought his candy and soda when he was in funds, he would
linger to turn the pages of periodicals whose illustrations were
fascinatingly pistolic. Some of the magazines upon the very
library table at home were sprinkled with pictures of people
(usually in evening clothes) pointing pistols at other people.
Nay, the Library Board of the town had emitted a "Selected List
of Fifteen Books for Boys," and Penrod had read fourteen of them
with pleasure, but as the fifteenth contained no weapons in the
earlier chapters and held forth little prospect of any shooting
at all, he abandoned it halfway, and read the most sanguinary of
the other fourteen over again.
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