THE GROCERY MAN AND PECK'S BAD BOY. Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 By George W. Peck 1883 [Illustration: Cover] [Illustration: frontispiece] [Illustration: titlepage] CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. VARIEGATED DOGS--THE BAD BOY SLEEPS ON THE ROOF--A MAN DOESN'TKNOW EVERYTHING AT FORTY-EIGHT--THE OLD MAN WANTS SOME POLLYNURIOUSWATER--THE DYER'S DOGS--PROCESSION OF THE DOGS--PINK, BLUE, GREEN ANDWHITE--"WELL, I'M DEM'd"--HIS PA DON'T APPRECIATE. CHAPTER II. HIS PA PLAYS JOKES--A MAN SHOULDN'T GET MAD AT A JOKE--THE MAGICBOUQUET--THE GROCERY MAN TAKES A TURN--HIS PA TRIES THE BOUQUET ATCHURCH--ONE FOR THE OLD MAID--A FIGHT ENSUES--THE BAD BOY THREATENS THEGROCERY man--A COMPROMISE. CHAPTER III. HIS PA STABBED--THE GROCERY MAN SETS A TRAP IN VAIN--A BOOM INLINIMENT--HIS PA GOES TO THE LANGTRY SHOW--THE BAD BOY TURNSBURGLAR--THE OLD MAN STABBED--HIS ACCOUNT OF THE FRAY--A GOOD SINGLEHANDED LIAR. CHAPTER IV. HIS PA BUSTED--THE CRAZE FOR MINING STOCK--WHAT'S A BILK?--THE PIOUSBILK--THE OLD MAN INVESTS--THE DEACONS AND EVEN THE HIRED GIRLSINVEST--HOT MAPLE SYRUP FOR ONE--GETTING A MAN'S MIND OFF HIS TROUBLES. CHAPTER V. HIS PA AND DYNAMITE--THE OLD MAN SELLING SILVER STOCK--FENIANSCARE--"DYNAMITE" IN MILWAUKEE--THE FENIAN BOOM--"GREAT GOD, MANNER!WE ARE BLOWED UP!"--HIS MA HAS LOTS OF SAND--THE OLD MAN USELESS INTROUBLE--THE DOG AND THE FALSE TEETH CHAPTER VI. HIS PA AN ORANGEMAN--THE GROCERY MAN SHAMEFULLY ABUSED--HE GETSHOT--BUTTER, OLEOMARGARINE AND AXLE GREASE--THE OLD MAN WEARS ORANGEON ST. PATRICK'S DAY--HE HAS TO RUN FOR HIS LIFE--THE BAD BOY AT SUNDAYSCHOOL--INGERSOLL AND BEECHER VOTED OUT--MARY HAD A LAMB CHAPTER VII. HIS MA DECEIVES HIM--THE BAD BOY IN SEARCH OF SAFFRON--"WELL, IT'S AGIRL, IF YOU MUST KNOW"--THE BAD BOY IS GRIEVED AT HIS MA'S DECEPTION--"SH-H-H TOOTSY GO TO SLEEP"--"BY LOW, BABY"--THAT SETTLED IT WITHTHE CAT--A BABY! BAH! IT MAKES ME TIRED CHAPTER VIII. THE BABY AND THE GOAT. THE BAD BOY THINKS HIS SISTER WILL BE A FIREENGINE--"OLD NUMBER TWO"--BABY REQUIRES GOAT MILK--? THE GOAT ISFRISKY--TAKES TO EATING ROMAN CANDLES--THE OLD MAN, THE HIRED GIRL, ANDTHE GOAT--THE BAD BOY BECOMES TELLER IN A LIVERY STABLE CHAPTER IX. A FUNERAL PROCESSION--THE BAD BOY ON CRUTCHES--"YOU OUGHT TO SEE THEMINISTER"--AN ELEVEN DOLLAR FUNERAL--THE MINISTER TAKES THE LINES--ANEARTHQUAKE--AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE WAS OVER--THE POLICEMAN FANS THEMINISTER--A MINISTER SHOULD HAVE SENSE CHAPTER X. THE OLD MAN MAKES A SPEECH. THE GROCERY MAN AND THE BAD BOY HAVEA FUSS--THE BOHEMIAN BAND--THE BAD BOY ORGANIZES A SERENADE--"BABYMINE"--THE OLD MAN ELOQUENT--THE BOHEMIANS CREATE A FAMINE--THE Y. M. C. A. ANNOUNCEMENT CHAPTER XI. GARDENING UNDER DIFFICULTIES--THE GROCERY MAN IS DECEIVED--THE BADBOY DON'T LIKE MOVING--GOES INTO THE COLORING BUSINESS--THE OLD MANTHOROUGHLY DISGUSTED--UNCLE TOM AND TOPSY--THE OLD MAN ARRESTED--WHATTHE GROCERY MAN THINKS--THE BAD BOY MORALIZES ON HIS FATE--RESOLVES TOBE GOOD CHAPTER XII. THE OLD MAN SHOOTS THE MINISTER--THE BAD BOY TRIES TO LEAD A DIFFERENTLIFE--MURDER IN THE AIR--THE OLD MAN AND HIS FRIENDS GIVE THEMSELVESAWAY--DREADFUL STORIES OF THEIR WICKED YOUTH--THE CHICKEN COOPINVADED--THE OLD MAN TO THE RESCUE--THE MINISTER AND THE DEACONS SALTED CHAPTER XIII. THE BAD BOY A THOROUGHBRED. THE BAD BOY WITH A BLACK EYE--A POORFRIENDLESS GIRL EXCITES HIS PITY--PROVES HIMSELF A GALLANTKNIGHT--THE OLD MAN IS CHARMED AT HIS SON'S COURAGE--THE GROCERY MANMORALIZES--FIFTEEN CHRISTS IN MILWAUKEE--THE TABLES TURNED--THE OLD MANWEARS THE BOY'S OLD CLOTHES CHAPTER XIV. ENTERTAINING Y. M. C. A. DELEGATES--THE BAD BOY MINISTERS AT THE Y. M. C. A. WATER FOUNTAIN--THE DELEGATES FLOOD THEMSELVES WITH SODAWATER--TWO DELEGATES DEALT TO HIS MA--THE NIGHT KEY--THE FALL OF THEFLOWER STAND--DELEGATES IN THE CELLAR ALL NIGHT--THE BAD BOY'S GIRL ISWORKING HIS REFORMATION CHAPTER XV. HE TURNS SUPE. THE BAD BOY QUITS JERKING SODA--ENTERS THE DRAMATICPROFESSION--"WHAT'S A SUPER"--THE PRIVILEGES OF A SUPE'S FATHER--BEHINDTHE SCENES--THE BAD BOY HAS PLAYED WITH MC'CULLOUGH--"IWAS THEPOPULACE. "--PLAYS IT ON HIS SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER--"I PRITHEE, AURESERVOIR, I GO HENS!" CHAPTER XVI. UNCLE EZRA PAYS A VISIT. UNCLE EZRA CAUSES THE BAD BOY TOBACKSLIDE--UNCLE EZRA AND THE OLD MAN WERE BAD PILLS--THEIR RECORD ISAWFUL--KEEPING UNCLE EZRA ON THE RAGGED EDGE--THE BED SLATS FIXED--THEOLD MAN TANGLED UP--THIS WORLD IS NOT RUN RIGHT--UNCLE EZRA MAKES HIMTIRED CHAPTER XVII. HE DISCUSSES THEOLOGY. MEDITATIONS ON NOAH'S ARK--THE GARDEN OFEDEN--THE ANCIENT DUDE--ADAM WITH A PLUG HAT ON--"I'M A THINKER FROMTHINKERSVILLE"--THE APOSTLES IN A PATROL WAGON--ELIJAH AND ELISHA--THEPRODIGAL SON--A VEAL POT PIE FOR DINNER CHAPTER XVIII. THE DEPARTED ROOSTER. THE GROCERY MAN DISCOURSES ON DEATH--THE DEADROOSTER--A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH--THE TENDERNESS BETWEEN THE ROOSTERAND HIS FAITHFUL HEN--THE HEN RETIRES TO SET--THE CHICKENS--THE PROUDROOSTER DIES--THE FICKLE HEN FLIRTING IN INDECENT HASTE CHAPTER XIX. ONE MORE JOKE ON THE OLD MAN--UNCLE EZRA RETURNS--THE BASKET ON THESTEPS--THE ANONYMOUS LETTER--"O, BROTHER THAT I SHOULD LIVE TO SEE THISDAY!"--AN UGLY DUTCH BABY--THE OLD MAN WHEELS THE BABY NOW--A FROG INTHE OLD MAN'S BED CHAPTER XX. FOURTH OF JULY MISADVENTURES. TROUBLE IN THE PISTOL POCKET--THE GROCERYMAN'S CAT THE BAD BOY A MINISTERING ANGEL--ASLEEP ON THE FOURTH OFJULY--GOES WITH HIS GIRL TO THE SOLDIER'S HOME--TERRIBLE. FOURTH OF JULYMISADVENTURES--THE GIRL WHO WENT OUT COMES BACK A BURNT OFFERING CHAPTER XXI. WORKING ON SUNDAY. TURNING A GRINDSTONE IS HEALTHY--"NOT ANY GRINDSTONEFOR HENNERY!"--THIS HYPOCRISY IS PLAYED OUT--ANOTHER JOB ON THE OLDMAN--HOW THE DAYS OF THE WEEK GOT MIXED--THE NUMEROUS FUNERALS--THEMINISTER APPEARS--THE BAD BOY GOES OVER THE BACK FENCE CHAPTER XXII. THE OLD MAN AWFULLY BLOATED. THE OLD MAN BEGINS DRINKING AGAIN--THINKSBETTING IS HARMLESS--HAD TO WALK HOME FROM CHICAGO--THE SPECTACLESCHANGED--A SMALL SUIT OF CLOTHES--THE OLD MAN AWFULLY BLOATED--"HENNERY, YOUR PA IS A MIGHTY SICK MAN"--THE SWELLING SUDDENLY GOES DOWN CHAPTER XXIII. THE GROCERY MAN AND THE GHOST. GHOSTS DON'T STEAL WORMY FIGS--A GRANDREHEARSAL--THE MINISTER MURDERS HAMLET--THE WATER MELON KNIFE--THE OLDMAN WANTED TO REHEARSE THE DRUNKEN SCENE IN RIP VAN WINKLE--NO HUGGINGALLOWED--HAMLET WOULDN'T HAVE TWO GHOSTS--"HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE ANIDIOT?" CHAPTER XXIV. THE CRUEL WOMAN AND THE LUCKLESS DOG--THE BAD BOY WITH A DOG AND A BLACKEYE--WHERE DID YOU STEAL HIM?--ANGELS DON'T BREAK DOGS' LEGS--A WOMANWHO BREAKS DOGS' LEGS HAS NO SHOW WITH ST. PETER--ANOTHER BURGLARSCARE--THE GROCERY DELIVERY MAN SCARED CHAPTER XXV. THE BAD BOY GROWS THOUGHTFUL--WHY IS LETTUCE LIKE A GIRL?--KING SOLOMONA FOOL--THINK OF ANY SANE MAN HAVING A THOUSAND WIVES--HE WOULD HAVETO HAVE TWO HOTELS DURING VACATION--300 BLONDES--600 BRUNETTES, ETC. --ATHOUSAND WIVES TAKING ICE CREAM--"I DON'T ENVY SOLOMON HIS THOUSAND" CHAPTER XXVI. FARM EXPERIENCES. THE BAD BOY WORKS ON A FARM FOR A DEACON--HE KNOWSWHEN HE HAS GOT ENOUGH--HOW THE DEACON MADE HIM FLAX AROUND--AND HOW HEMADE IT WARM FOR THE DEACON CHAPTER XXVII. DRINKING CIDER IN THE CELLAR--THE DEACON WILL NOT ACCEPT HENNERY'SRESIGNATION--HE WANTS BUTTER ON HIS PANCAKES--HIS CHUM JOINS HIM--THESKUNK IN THE CELLAR--THE POOR BOY GETS THE "AGER. " CHAPTER I. VARIEGATED DOGS--THE BAD BOY SLEEPS ON THE KOOP--A MAN DOESN'T KNOW EVERYTHING AT FORTY-EIGHT--THE OLD MAN WANTS SOME POLLYNURIOUS WATER--THE DYER'S DOGS--PROCESSION OP THE DOGS--PINK, BLUE, GREEN AND WHITE--"WELL I'M DEM'D--HIS PA DON'T APPRECIATE. "How do you and your Pa get along now, " asked the grocery-man of the badboy, as he leaned against the counter instead of sitting down on a stoolwhile he bought a bottle of liniment. "O, I don't know. He don't seem to appreciate me. What he ought to haveis a deaf and dumb boy, with only one leg, and both arms broke--then hecould enjoy a quiet life. But I am too gay for Pa, and you needn't besurprised if you never see me again. I talk of going off with a circus. Since I played the variegated dogs on Pa, there seems to have been acoldness in the family, and I sleep on the roof. "Variegated dogs, " said the store keeper, "what kind of a game is that?You have not played another Daisy trick on your Pa, have you?" "Oh, no, it was nothing of that kind. You know Pa thinks he is smart. Hethinks because he is forty-eight years old he knows it all; but itdon't seem to me as though a man of his age, that had sense, would leta tailor palm off on him a pair of pants so tight that he would have touse a button-hook to button them; but they can catch him on everything, just as though he was a kid smoking cigarettes. Well, you know Pa drinkssome. That night the new club opened he came home pretty fruitful, andnext morning his head ached so he said he would buy me a dog if I wouldgo down town and get a bottle of pollynurious water for him. You knowthat dye house on Grand avenue, where they have got the four white spitzdogs. When I went after the penurious water, I noticed they had beencoloring their dogs with the dye stuff, and I put up a job with the dyeman's little boy to help me play it on Pa. They had one dog dyed pink, another blue, another red, and another green, and I told the boy I wouldtreat him to ice cream if he would let one out at a time, when I camedown with Pa, and call him in and let another out, and when we startedto go away, to let them all out. What I wanted to do was to paralyze Pa, and make him think he had got 'em, got dogs the worst way. So, about teno'clock when his head got cleared off, and his stomach got settled, hechanged ends with his cuffs, and we came down town, and I told him Iknew where he could get a splendid white spitz dog for me, for fivedollars; and if he would get it, I would never do anything disrespectfulagain, and would just sit up nights to please him, and help him upstairs and get seltzer for him. So we went by the dye house, and just asI told him I didn't want anything but a white dog, the door opened, andthe pink dog came out and barked at us, and I said 'that's him' and theboy called him back. Pa looked as though he had the colic, and his eyesstuck out, and he said 'Hennery, that is a pink dog?' and I said 'no, itis a white dog, Pa, ' and just then the green dog came out, and I askedPa if it wasn't a pretty white dog, and and he turned pale and said'hell, boy, that is a green dog--what's got into the dogs?' I told himhe must be color blind, and was feeling in my pocket for a strap to tiethe dog, and telling him he must be careful of his health or he wouldsee something worse than green dogs, when the green dog went in, and theblue dog came rushing out and barked at Pa. Well, Pa leaned against atree box, and his eyes stuck out like stops on an organ, and the sweatwas all over his face in drops as big as kernels of hominy. "I think a boy ought to do everything he can to make it pleasant for hisPa, don't _you_. And yet some parents don't realize what a comfort a boyis. The blue dog was called in, and just as Pa wiped the perspirationoff his forehead, and rubbed his eyes and put on his specks, the redmaroon dog came out. Pa acted as if he was tired, and sat down on ahorse block. Dogs _do_ make some people tired, don't they? He took holdof my hand, and his hand trembled just as though he was putting a gunwad in the collection plate at church, and he said, 'My son, tell metruly, is that a red dog?'" [Illustration: Well I'm dem'd 014] "A fellow has got to lie a little if he is going to have any fun withhis Pa, and I told him it was a white dog, and I could get it for fivedol-dars. He straightened up just as the dog went into the house, andsaid 'Well, I'm dem'd;' and just then the boy let all the dogs out andsicked them on a cat, which ran up a shade tree right near Pa, and theyrushed all around us--the blue dog going between his legs, and the greendog trying to climb the tree, and the pink dog barking, and the red dogstanding on his hind feet. "Pa was weak as a cat, and told me to go right home with him, and hewould buy me a bicycle. He asked me how many dogs there were, and whatwas the color of them. I s'pose I did awful wrong, but I told him therewas only one dog, and a cat, and the dog was white. "Well, sir, Pa acted just as he did the night Hancock was beat, and hehad to have the doctor to give him something to quiet him (the time hewanted me to go right down town and buy a hundred rat traps, but thedoctor said never mind, I needn't go). I took him home and Ma soakedhis feet, and give him some ginger tea, and while I was gone after thedoctor he asked Ma if she ever saw a green dog. "That was what made all the trouble. If Ma had kept her mouth shut Iwould have been all right, but she up and told him that they had a greendog, and a blue dog, and all colors of spitz dogs down at the dyers. They dyed them just for an advertisement, and for him to be quiet and hewould feel better when he got over it. Pa was all right when I got backand told him the doctor had gone to Wauwatosa, and I had left an orderon his slate. Pa said he would leave an order on my slate. He took aharness tug and used it for breeching on me. I don't think a boy's Paought to wear a harness on his son, do you? He said he would learn me toplay rainbow dogs on him. He said I was a liar, and he expected to seeme wind up in Congress. Say, is Congress anything like Waupun or SingSing? No, I can't stay, thank you, I must go down to the office and tellPa I have reformed, and freeze him out of a circus ticket. He is a agood enough man, only he don't appreciate a a boy that has got allthe modern improvements. Pa and Ma are going to enter me in the Sundayschool. I guess I'll take first money, don't you?" And the bad boy went out with a visible limp, and a look of geniuscramped for want of opportunity. CHAPTER II. HIS PA PLAYS JOKES--A MAN SHOULDN'T GET MAD AT A JOKE--THE MAGIC BOUQUET--THE GROCERY MAN TAKES A TURN--HIS PA TRIES THE BOUQUET AT CHURCH--ONE FOR THE OLD MAID--A FIGHT ENSUES-- THE BAD BOY THREATENS THE GROCERY MAN--A COMPROMISE. "Say, do you think a little practical joke does any hurt, " asked thebad boy of the grocery man, as he came in with his Sunday suit on, anda bouquet in his button-hole, and pried off a couple of figs from a newbox that had been just opened. "No sir, " said the groceryman, as he licked off the syrup that drippedfrom a quart measure, from which he had been filling a jug. "I holdthat a man who gets mad at a practical joke, that is, one that does notinjure him, is a fool, and he ought to be shunned by all decent people. That's a nice bouquet you have in your coat. What is it, pansies? Let mesmell of it, " and the grocery man bent over in front of the boy to takea whiff at the bouquet. As he did so a stream of water shot out of theinnocent looking bouquet and struck him full in the face, and run downover his shirt, and the grocery man yelled murder, and fell over abarrel of axe helves and scythe snaths, and then groped around for atowel to wipe his face. "You condemn skunk, " said the grocery man to the boy, as he took up anaxe-helve and started for him, "what kind of a golblasted squirt gunhave you got there. I will maul you, by thunder, " and he rolled up hisshirt sleeves. "There, keep your temper. I took a test vote of you on the subject ofpractical jokes, before the machine began to play upon the conflagrationthat was raging on your whiskey nose, and you said a man that would getmad at a joke was a fool, and now I know it. Here, let me show it toyou. There is a rubber hose runs from the bouquet, inside my coat tomy pants pocket, and there is a bulb of rubber, that holds about half apint, and when a feller smells of the posey, I squeeze the bulb, andyou see the result. It's fun, where you don't squirt it on a person thatgets mad. " The grocery man said he would give the boy half a pound of figs ifhe would lend the bouquet to him for half an hour, to play it on acustomer, and the boy fixed it on the grocery man, and turned the nozzleso it would squirt right back into the grocery man's face. He tried iton the first customer that come in, and got it right in his own face, and then the bulb in his pants pocket got to leaking, and the rest ofthe water ran down the grocery man's trouser's leg, and he gave it up indisgust, and handed it back to the boy. "How was it your Pa had to be carried home from the sociable in a hackthe other night?" asked the grocery man, as he stood close to the stoveso his pants leg would dry. "He has not got to drinking again, has he?" "O, no, " said the boy, as he filled the bulb with vinegar, to practiceon his chum, "It was this bouquet that got Pa into the trouble. You seeI got Pa to smell of it, and I just filled him chuck full of water. He got mad and called me all kinds of names, and said I was no good onearth, and I would fetch up in state's prison, and then he wanted toborrow it to wear to the sociable. He said he would have more fun thanyou could shake a stick at, and I asked him if he didn't think he wouldfetch up in state's prison, and he said it was different with a man. Hesaid when a man played a joke there was a certain dignity about itthat was lacking in a boy. So I lent it to him, and we all went to thesociable in the basement of the church. I never see Pa more kitteny thanhe was that night. He filled the bulb with ice water, and the first onehe got to smell of his button-hole bouquet was an old maid who thinksPa is a heathen, but she likes to be made something of by anybody thatwears pants, and when Pa sidled up to her and began talking about what agreat work the christian wimmen of the land were doing in educatingthe heathen, she felt real good, and then she noticed Pa's posey in hisbutton-hole and she touched it, and then she reached over her beak tosmell of it. Pa he squeezed the bulb, and about half a teacupful ofwater struck her right in the nose, and some went into her strangleplace, and _O, my_, didn't she yell. " [Illustration: One for the old maid 022] "The sisters gathered around her, and they said her face was all coveredwith perspiration, and the paint was coming off, and they took her inthe kitchen, and she told them Pa had slapped her with a dish of icecream, and the wimmin told the minister and the deacons, and they wentto Pa for a nexplanation, and Pa told them it was not so, and theminister got interested and got near Pa, and Pa let the water go at him, and hit him on the eye, and then a deacon got a dose, and Pa laughed;and then the minister who used to go to college, and be a hazer, andbox, he got mad and squared off and hit Pa three times right by the eye, and one of the deacons kicked Pa, and Pa got mad and said he could cleanout the whole shebang, and began to pull off his coat, when theybundled him out doors, and Ma got mad to see Pa abused, and she left thesociable, and I had to stay and eat ice cream and things for the wholefamily. Pa says that settles it with him. He says they haven't got anymore christian charity in that church than they have in a tannery. Hiseyes are just getting over being black from the sparring lessons, andnow he has got to go through oysters and beef-steak cure again. He saysit is all owing to me. " "Well, what has all this got to do with your putting up signs in frontof my store, 'Rotten Eggs, ' and 'Frowy Butter a specialty, ' said thegrocery man as he took the boy by the ear and pulled him around. Youhave got an idea you are smart, and I want you to keep away from here. The next time I catch you in here I shall call the police and have youpulled. Now git!" The boy pulled his ear back on the side of his head where it belonged, took out a cigarette and lit it, and after puffing smoke in the face ofthe grocery cat that was sleeping on the cover to the sugar barrel hesaid: "If I was a provision pirate that never sold anything but what wasspoiled so it couldn't be sold in a first class store, who cheated inweights and measures, who bought only wormy figs and decayed cod-fish, who got his butter from a fat rendering establishment, his cider froma vinegar factory, and his sugar from a glucose factory, I would notinsult the son of one of the finest families. Why, sir, I could go outon the corner, and when I saw customers coming here, I could tell astory that would turn their stomachs, and send them to the grocery onthe next corner. Suppose I should tell them that the cat sleeps in thedried apple barrel, that the mice made nests in the prune box, and ratsrun riot through the raisins, and that you never wash your hands excepton Decoration day and Christmas, that you wipe your nose on your shirtsleeves, and that you have the itch, do you think your business would beimproved? Suppose I should tell the customers that you buy sour kraut ofa wood-en-shoed Polacker, who makes it of pieces of cabbage that he getsby gathering swill, and sell that stuff to respectable people, couldyou pay your rent? If I should tell them that you put lozengers in thecollection plate at church, and charge the minister forty cents a poundfor oleomargarine, you would have to close up. Old man, I am onto you, and now you apologize for pulling my ear. " The grocery man turned pale during the recital, and finally said the badboy was one of the best little fellows in this town, and the boy wentout and hung up a sign in front:-- GIRL WANTED TO COOK CHAPTER III. HIS PA STABBED--THE GROCERY MAN SETS A TRAP IN VAIN--A BOOM IN LINIMENT--HIS PA GOES TO THE LANGTRY SHOW--THE BAD BOY TURNS BURGLAR--THE OLD MAN STABBED--HIS ACCOUNT OF THE FRAY-- A GOOD SINGLE HANDED LIAR. "I hear you had burglars over to your house last night, " said thegrocery man to the bad boy, as he came in and sat on the counter rightover a little gimlet hole, where the grocery man had fixed a darningneedle so that by pulling a string the needle would fly up through thehole and run into the boy about an inch. The grocery man had been layingfor the boy about two days, and now that he had got him right over thehole the first time, it made him laugh to think how he would make himjump and yell, and as he edged off and got hold of the string the boylooked unconscious of impending danger. The grocery man pulled, and theboy sat still. He pulled again, and again, and finally the boy said: "Yes, it is reported that we had burglars over there. O, you needn'tpull that string any more. I heard you was setting a trap for me, andI put a piece of board inside my pants, and thought I would let youexercise yourself. Go ahead if it amuses you. It don't hurt me. " The grocery man looked sad, and then smiled a sickly sort of a smile, at the failure of his plan to puncture the boy, and then he said, "Well, how was it? The policeman didn't seem to know much about theparticulars. He said there was so much deviltry going on at your housethat nobody could tell when anything was serious, and he was inclined tothink it was a put up job. " "Now let's have an understanding, " says the boy. "Whatever I say, youare not to give me away. It's a go, is it? I have always been afraid ofyou, because you have a sort of decayed egg look about you. You are likea peck of potatoes with the big ones on top, a sort of a strawberrybox, with the bottom raised up, so I have thought you would go back on afellow. But if you won't give this away, here goes. You see, I heard Matell Pa to bring up another bottle of liniment last night. When Ma corksherself, or has a pain anywhere, she just uses liniment for all thatis out, and a pint bottle don't last more than a week. Well, I told mychum, and we laid for Pa. This liniment Ma uses is offul hot, and almostblisters. Pa went to the Langtry show, and did not get home till eleveno'clock, and me and my chum decided to teach Pa a lesson. I don't thinkit is right for a man to go to the theaters and not take his wife or hislittle boy. "So we concluded to burgle Pa. We agreed to lay on the stairs, and whenhe came up my chum was to hit him on the head with a dried bladder, and I was to stab him on his breast pocket with a stick, and break theliniment bottle, and make him think he was killed. "It couldn't have worked better if we had rehearsed it. We had talkedabout burglars at supper time, and got Pa nervous, so when he came upstairs and was hit on the head with the bladder, the first thing he saidwas 'Burglars, by mighty, ' and he started to go back, and I hit him onthe breast pocket, where the bottle was, and then we rushed by him, downstairs, and I said in a stage whisper, 'I guess he's a dead man, ' and wewent down cellar and up the back stairs to my room and undressed. " [Illustration: The old man stabbed 030] "Pa hollered to Ma that he was murdered, and Ma called me, and I camedown in my night-shirt, and the hired girl she came down, and Pa was onthe lounge, and he said his life-blood was fast ebbing away. He held hishand on the wound, and said he could feel the warm blood trickling cleardown to his boots. I told Pa to stuff some tar into the wound, such ashe told me to put on my lip to make my mustache grow, and Pa said, 'Myboy, this is no time for trifling. Your Pa is on his last legs. When Icame up stairs I met six burglars, and I attacked them, and forced fourof them down, and was going to hold them and send for the police, whentwo more, that I did not know about, jumped on me, and I was getting thebest of them when one of them struck me over the head with a crowbar, and the other stabbed me to the heart with a butcher knife. I havereceived my death wound, my boy, and my hot southern blood, that Ioffered up so freely for my country in her time of need, is passing frommy body, and soon your Pa will be only a piece of poor clay. Get someice and put on my stomach, and all the way down, for I am burning up. 'I went to the-water pitcher and got a chunk of ice and put inside Pa'sshirt, and while Ma was tearing up an old skirt to stop the flow ofblood, I asked Pa if he felt better, and if he could describe thevillains who had murdered him. Pa gasped and moved his legs to get themcool from the clotted blood, he said, and he went on, 'One of them wasabout six foot high, and had a sandy mustache. I got him down and hithim on the nose, and if the police find him, his nose will be broke. Thesecond one was thick set, and weighed about two hundred. I had him down, and my boot was on his neck, and I was knocking two more down when I washit. The thick set one will have the mark of boot heels on his throat. Tell the police when I'm gone, about the boot heel marks. ' "By this time Ma had got the skirt tore up, and she stuffed it underPa's shirt, right where he said he was hit, and Pa was telling us whatto do to settle his estate, when Ma began to smell the liniment, andshe found the broken bottle in his pocket, and searched Pa for the placewhere he was stabbed, and then she began to laugh, and Pa got mad andsaid he didn't see as a death-bed scene was such an almighty funnyaffair; and then she told him he was not hurt, but that he had fallen onthe stairs and broke his bottle, and that there was no blood on him, and he said, 'do you mean to tell me my body and legs are not bathed inhuman gore?' and then Pa got up and found it was only the liniment. Hegot mad and asked Ma why she didn't fly around and get something to takethat liniment off his legs, as it was eating them right through to thebone; and then he saw my chum put his head in the door, with one gallushanging down, and Pa looked at me, and then he said, 'Lookahere, if Ifind out it was you boys that put up this job on me, I'll make it so hotfor you that you will think liniment is ice cream in comparison. ' I toldPa it didn't look reasonable that me and my chum could be six burglars, six feet high, with our noses broke, and boot-heel marks on our neck, and Pa, he said for us to go to bed alfired quick, and give him a chanceto rinse of that liniment, and we retired. Say, how does my Pa strikeyou as a good, single-handed liar?" and the boy went up to the counter, while the grocery man went after a scuttle of coal. In the meantime, one of the grocery man's best customers--a deacon inthe church--had come in and sat down on the counter, over the darningneedle, and as the grocery man came in with the coal, the boy pulled thestring, and went out door and tipped over a basket of rutabagas, whilethe deacon got down off the counter with his hand clasped, and angerin every feature, and told the grocery man he could whip him in twominutes. The grocery man asked what was the matter, and the deaconhunted up the source from whence the darning needle came through thecounter, and as the boy went across the street, the deacon and thegrocery man were rolling on the floor, the grocery man trying to holdthe deacon's fists while he explained about the darning needle, and thatit was intended for the boy. How it came out the boy did not wait tosee. CHAPTER IV. HIS PA BUSTED--THE CRAZE FOR MINING STOCK--WHAT'S A BILK?-- THE PIOUS BILK--THE OLD MAN INVESTS--THE DEACONS AND EVEN THE HIRED GIRLS INVEST--HOT MAPLE SYRUP FOR ONE--GETTING A MAN'S MIND OFF HIS TROUBLES. "Say, can't I sell you some stock in a silver mine, " asked the bad boyof the grocery man, as he came in the store and pulled from his breastpocket a document printed on parchment paper, and representing severalthousand dollars stock in a silver mine. "Lookahere, " says the grocery man, as he turned pale, and thought oftelephoning to the police station for a detective, "you haven't beenstealing your father's mining stock, have you? Great heavens, it hascome at last! I have known, all the time that you would turn out to bea burglar, or a defaulter or robber of some kind. Your father has thereputation of having a bonanza in a silver mine, but if you go lugginghis silver stock around he will soon be ruined. Now you go right backhome and put that stock in your Pa's safe, like a good boy. " "Put it in the safe! O, no, we keep it in a box stall now, in thebarn. I will trade you this thousand dollars in stock for two heads oflettuce, and get Pa to sign it over to you, if you say so. Pa told me Icould have the whole trunk full if I wanted it, and the hired girls areusing the silver stock to clean the windows, and to kindle fires, andPa has quit the church, and says he won't belong to any concern thatharbors bilks. What's a bilk?" said the boy, as he opened a candy jarand took out four sticks of hoarhound candy. "A bilk, " said the grocery man, as he watched the boy, "is a fellowthat plays a man for candy, or money, or anything, and don't intend toreturn an equivalent. You are a small sized bilk. But what's the matterwith your Pa and the church, and what has the silver mine stock got todo with it?" "Well, you remember that exhorter that was here last fall, that usedto board around with the church people all the week, and talk about Zionand laying up treasures where the moths wouldn't gnaw them, and theywouldn't get rusty, and where thieves wouldn't pry off the hinges. Hewas the one that used to go home with Ma from prayer meetings, when Pawas down town, and who wanted to pay off the church debt in solid silverbricks. He's the bilk. I guess if Pa should get him by the neck he wouldjerk nine kinds of revealed religion out of him. O, Pa is hotter than hewas when the hornets took the lunch off of him. When you strike a piousman on the pocket-book it hurts him. That fellow prayed and sang like anangel, and boarded around like a tramp. He stopped at our house over aweek, and he had specimens of rock that were chuck full of silver andgold, and he and Pa used to sit up nights and look at it. You could pickpieces of silver out of the rock as big as buck shot, and he had somesilver bricks that were beautiful. He had been out in Colorado and founda hill full of the silver rock, and he wanted to form a stock companyand dig out millions of dollars. He didn't want anybody but pious menthat belonged to the church, in the company, and I think that was onething that caused Pa to unite with the church so suddenly. I know he wasas wicked as could be a few days before he joined the church; but thisrevivalist, with his words about the beautiful beyond where all shalldwell together in peace, and sing praises; and his description of thatColorado mountain where the silver stuck out so you could hang your haton it, converted Pa. That man's scheme was to let all the churchpeople who were in good standing, and who had plenty of money, into thecompany, and when the mine begun to return dividends by the car load, they could give largely to the church and pay the debts of all thechurches, and put down carpets and fresco the ceiling. The man said hefelt that he had been steered on to that silver mine by a higher power, and his idea was to work it for the glory of the cause. He said he likedPa, and would make him vice president of the company. Pa, he bit likea bass, and I guess he invested five thousand dollars in stock, and Ma, she wanted to come in, and she put in a thousand dollars that she hadlaid up to buy some diamond ear-rings, and the man gave Pa a lot ofstock to sell to other members of the church. They all went into it, even the minister. He drew his salary ahead, and all of the deacons theycome in, and the man went back to Colorado with about thirty thousanddollars of good, pious money. Yesterday Pa got a paper from Colorado, giving the whole snap away, and the pious man has been spending themoney in Denver, and whooping it up. Pa suspected something was wrongtwo weeks ago, when he heard that the pious man had been on a toot inChicago, and he wrote to a man in Denver, who used to get full with Payears ago when they were both on the turf; and Pa's friend said the manthat sold the stock was a fraud, and that he didn't own no mine, andthat he borrowed the samples of ore and silver bricks from a pawnbrokerin Denver. I guess it will break Pa up for a while, though he is wellenough fixed with mortgages and things; but it hurts him to be took in. He lays it all to Ma--he says if she hadn't let that exhorter for thesilver mine go home with her this would not have occurred, and Ma saysshe believes Pa was in partnership with the man to beat her out of herthousand dollars that she was going to buy a pair of diamond ear-ringswith. O, it is a terror over to the house now. Both the hired girls putin all the money they had, and took stock, and they threaten to sue Pafor arson, and they are going to leave to-night, and Ma will have to dothe work. Don't you never try to get rich quick, " said the boy as hepeeled a herring, and took a couple of crackers. "Never you mind me, " said the grocery man, "they don't catch me on anyof their silver mines; but I hope this will have some influence on you, and teach you to respect your Pa's feelings, and not play jokes on himwhile he is feeling so bad over his being swindled. " "O, I don't know about that, I think when a man is in trouble, if he hasa good little boy to take his mind from his troubles and get him madat something else, it rests him. Last night we had hot maple syrup andbiscuit for supper, and Pa had a saucer full in front of him, just asteaming. I could see he was thinking too much about his mining stock, and I thought if there was anything I could do to take his mind offof it and place it on something else, I would be doing a kindness thatwould be appreciated. I sat on the right of Pa, and when he wasn'tlooking I pulled the table cloth so the saucer of red hot maple syrupdropped off in his lap. " [Illustration: Maple syrup for one 042] "Well, you'd a dide to see how quick his thoughts turned from hisfinancial troubles to his physical misfortunes. There was about a pintof hot syrup, and it went all over his lap, and you know how hot meltedmaple sugar is, and how it sort of clings to anything. Pa jumped up andgrabbed hold of his pants legs to pull them away from hisself, and hedanced around and told Ma to turn the hose on him, and then he tooka pitcher of ice water and poured it down his pants, and he said thecondemned old table was getting so ricketty that a saucer wouldn't stayon it, and I told Pa if he would put some tar on his legs, the same kindthat he told me to put on my lip to make my moustache grow, the syrupwouldn't burn so; and then he cuffed me, and I think he felt better Itis a great thing to get a man's mind off of his troubles, but where aman hasn't got any mind like you, for instance--" At this point the grocery man picked up a fire poker, and the boy wentout in a hurry and hung up a sign in front of the grocery: CASH PAID FOR FAT DOGS. CHAPTER V. HIS PA AND DYNAMITE--THE OLD MAN SELLING SILVER STOCK-- FENIAN SCARE--"DYNAMITE" IN MILWAUKEE--THE FENIAN BOOM-- "GREAT GOD HANNER WE ARE BLOWED UP!"--HIS MA HAS LOTS OF SAND--THE OLD MAN USELESS IN TROUBLE. THE DOG AND THE FALSE TEETH. "I guess your Pa's losses in the silver mine have made him crazy, haven't they?" said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in thestore with his eye winkers singed off, and powder marks on his face, andbegan to play on the harmonica, as he sat down on the end of a stick ofstove wood, and balanced himself. "O, I guess not. He has hedged. He got in with a deacon of anotherchurch, and sold some of his stock to him, and Pa says if I will keep mycondemn mouth shut he will unload the whole of it, if the churches holdout. He goes to a new church every night there is prayer meeting oranything, and makes Ma go with him, to give him tone; and after meetingshe talks with the sisters about how to piece a silk bed quilt, whilePa gets in his work selling silver stock. I don't know but he will ordersome more stock from the factory, if he sells all he has got, " and theboy went on playing "There's a land that is fairer than Day. " "But what was he skipping up street for the other night with his hatoff, grabbing at his coat tails as though they were on fire? I thought Inever saw a pussy man run any faster. And what was the celebration downon your street about that time? I thought the world was coming to anend, " and the grocery man kept away from the boy, for fear he wouldexplode. "O, that was only a Fenian scare. Nothin' serious. You see Pa is a sortof half Englishman. He claims to be an American citizen, when he wantsoffice, but when they talk about a draft he claims to be a subject ofGreat Brit-tain, and he says they can't touch him. Pa is a darn smartman, and don't you forget it. There don't any of them get ahead of Pamuch. Well, Pa has said a good deal about the wicked Fenians, and thatthey ought to be pulled, and all that, and when I read the story in thepapers about the explosion in the British Parliament Pa was hot. He saidthe damnirish was ruining the whole world. He didn't dare say it at thetable or our hired girl would have knocked him silly with a spoonfulof mashed potatoes, 'cause she is a nirish girl, and she can lick anyEnglishman in this town. Pa said there ought to have been somebodythereto have taken that bomb up and throwed it in the sewer before itexploded. He said that if he ever should see a bomb he would grab itright up and throw it away where it wouldn't hurt anybody. Pa has meread the papers to him nights, cause his eyes have got splinters in 'em, and after I had read all there was in the paper I made up a lot more andpretended to read it, about how it was rumored that the Fenians herein Milwaukee were going to place dynamite bombs at every house where anEnglishman lived, and at a given signal blow them all up. Pa looked palearound the gills, but he said he wasn't scared. "Pa and Ma were going to call on a she deacon that night, that has lotsof money in the bank, to see if she didn't want to invest in a dead surepaying silver mine, and me and my chum concluded to give them asend off. We got my big black injy rubber foot-ball, and painted'_Dinymight_' in big white letters on it, and tied a piece of tarredrope to it for a fuse, and got a big fire cracker, one of those oldfourth of July horse scarers, and a basket full of broken glass. Weput the foot-ball in front of the step and lit the tarred rope, and gotunder the step with the firecrackers and basket, where they go down intothe basement. Pa and Ma came out the front door, and down the steps, and Pa saw the football, and the burning fuse, and he said 'Great God, Hanner, we are blowed up!' and he started to run, and Ma she stopped tolook at it. Just as Pa started to run I touched off the fire cracker, and my chum arranged it to pour out the broken glass on the brickpavement just as the fire cracker went off. " [Illustration: Great God, Hanner, we are blowed up 048] "Well, everything went just as we expected, except Ma. She had examinedthe foot-ball, and concluded it was not dangerous, and was just givingit a kick as the firecracker went off, and the glass fell, and thefirecracker was so near her that it scared her, and when Pa lookedaround Ma was flying across the sidewalk, and Pa heard the noise andhe thought the house was blown to atoms. O, you'd a died to see him goaround the corner. You could play crokay on his coat-tail, and his facewas as pale as Ma's when she goes to a party. But Ma didn't scare much. As quick as she stopped against the hitching post she knew it was usboys, and she came down there, and maybe she didn't maul me. I criedand tried to gain her sympathy by telling her the firecracker went offbefore it was due, and burned my eyebrows off, but she didn't let upuntil I promised to go and find Pa. "I tell you, my Ma ought to be engaged by the British government to huntout the dynamite fiends. She would corral them in two minutes. If Pa hadas much sand as Ma has got, it would be warm weather for me. Well, meand my chum went and headed Pa off or I guess he would be running yet. We got him up by the lake shore, and he wanted to know if the house felldown. He said he would leave it to me if he ever said anything againstthe Fenians, and I told him he had always claimed that the Fenians werethe nicest men in the world, and it seemed to relieve him very much. When he got home and found the house there he was tickled, and when Macalled him an old bald-headed coward, and said it was only a joke of theboys with a foot ball, he laughed right out, and said he knew it all thetime, and he ran to see if Ma would be scared. And then he wanted tohug me, but it wasn't my night to hug and I went down to the theater. Padon't amount to much when there is trouble. The time Ma had them cramps, you remember, when you got your cucumbers first last season, Pa camenear fainting away, and Ma said ever since they had been married whenanything ailed her, Pa has had pains just the same as she has, only hegrunted more, and thought he was going to die. Gosh, if I was a man Iwouldn't be sick every time one of the neighbors had a back ache, wouldyou? "Well you can't tell. When you have been married twenty or thirty yearsyou will know a good deal more than you do now. You think you know itall, now, and you are pretty intelligent for a boy that has been broughtup carelessly, but there are things that you will learn after a whilethat will astonish you. But what ails your Pa's teeth? The hired girlwas over here to get some corn meal for gruel, and she said your Pa wasgumming it, since he lost his teeth. " "O, about the teeth. That was too bad. You see my chum has got a dogthat is old, and his teeth have all come out in front, and this morningI borried Pa's teeth before he got up, to see if we couldn't fix them inthe dog's mouth, so he could eat better. Pa says it is an evidence of akind heart for a boy to be good to dumb animals, but it is a darn meandog that will go back on a friend. We tied the teeth in the dog's mouthwith a string that went around his upper jaw, and another around hisunder jaw, and you'd a dide to see how funny he looked when he laffed. "He looked just like Pa when he tried to smile so as to get me to comeup to him so he can lick me. The dog pawed his mouth a spell to get theteeth out, and then we gave him a bone with some meat on, and he beganto gnaw the bone, and the teeth come off the plate, and he thought itwas pieces of the bone, and he swallowed the teeth. My chum noticed itfirst, and he said we had got to get in our work pretty quick to savethe plates, and I think we were in luck to save them. I held the dog, and my chum, who was better acquainted with him, untied the strings andgot the gold plates out, but there were only two teeth left, and the dogwas happy. He woggled his tail for more teeth, but we hadn't any more. I am going to give him Ma's teeth some day. My chum says when a dog getsan appetite for anything you have got to keep giving it to him or hegoes back on you. But I think my chum played dirt on me. We sold thegold plates to a jewelry man, and my chum kept the money. I think, as long as I furnished the goods, he ought to have given me somethingbesides the experience, don't you? After this I don't have no morepartners, you bet. " All this time the boy was marking on a piece ofpaper, and soon after he went out the grocery man noticed a crowdoutside, and on he found a sign hanging up which read: WORMY FIGS FOR PARTIES. CHAPTER VI. HIS PA AN ORANGEMAN--THE GROCERY MAN SHAMEFULLY ABUSED---HE GETS HOT--BUTTER, OLEOMARGARINE AND AXLE GREASE--THE OLD MAN WEARS ORANGE ON ST. PATRICK'S DAY--HE HAS TO RUN FOR HIS LIFE--THE BAD BOY AT SUNDAY SCHOOL--INGERSOLL AND BEECHER VOTED OUT--"MARY HAD A LITTLE LAM. " "Say, will you do me a favor, " asked the bad boy of the grocery man, ashe sat down on the soap box and put his wet boots on the stove. "Well, y-e-s, " said the grocery man hesitatingly, with a feeling thathe was liable to be sold. "If you will help me to catch the villain whohangs up those disreputable signs in front of my store, I will. What isit?" "I want you to lick this stamp and put it on this letter. It is to mygirl, and I want to fool her, " and the boy handed over the letter andstamp, and while the grocery man was licking it and putting it on, theboy filled his pockets with dried peaches out of a box. "There, that's a small job, " said the grocery man, as he pressed thestamp on the letter with his thumb and handed it back. "But how are yougoing to fool her?" "That's just business, " said the boy, as he held the letter to his noseand smelled of the stamp. "That will make her tired. You see, every timeshe gets a letter from me she kisses the stamp, because she thinksI licked it. When she kisses this stamp and gets the fumes of plugtobacco, and stale beer, and limburg cheese, and mouldy potatoes, itwill knock her down, and then she will ask me what ailed the stamp, andI will tell her I got you to lick it, and then it will make her sick, and her parents will stop trading here. O, it will paralize her. Do youknow, you smell like a glue factory. Gosh I can smell you all over thestore, Don't you smell anything that smells spoiled?" The grocery manthought he did smell something that was rancid, and he looked around thestove and finally kicked the boy's boot off the stove and said, "It'syour boots burning. Gracious, open the door. It smells like a hot boxon a caboose. Whew! And there comes a couple of my best lady customers. "The ladies came in and held their handkerchiefs to their noses, and while they were trading the boy said, as though continuing theconversation: "Yes, Pa says that last oleomargarine I got here is nothing but axlegrease. Why don't you put your axle grease in a different kind of apackage? The only way you can tell axle grease from oleomargarine isin spreading it on pancakes. Pa says axle grease will spread, but youralleged butter just rolls right up and acts like lip salve, or ointment, and is only fit to use on a sore--" At this point the ladies went out of the store in disgust, withoutbuying anything, and the grocery man took a dried codfish by the tailand went up to the boy and took him by the neck. "Golblast you, I havea notion to kill you. You have driven away more custom from this storethan your neck is worth. Now you git, " and he struck the boy across theback with the codfish. "That's just the way with you all, " says the boy, as he put his sleeveup to his eyes and pretended to cry, "when a fellow is up in the world, there is nothing too good for him, but when he gets down, you maul himwith a codfish. Since Pa drove me out of the house, and told me to goshirk for my living, I haven't had a kind word from anybody. My chum'sdog won't even follow me, and when a fellow gets so low down that a doggoes back on him there is nothing left for him to do but to loaf arounda grocery, or sit on a jury, and I am too young to sit on a jury, thoughI know more than some of the beats that lay around the court to get on ajury. I am going to drown myself, and my death will be laid to you. Theywill find evidences of codfish on my clothing, and you will be arrestedfor driving me to a suicide's grave. Good-bye. I forgive you, " and theboy started for the door. "Hold on here, " says the grocery man, feeling that he had been tooharsh, "Come back here and have some maple sugar. What did your Pa driveyou away from home for?" "O, it was on account of St. Patrick's Day, " said the bad boy as he bitoff half a pound of maple sugar, and dried his tears. "You see, Pa neversees Ma buy a new silk handkerchief, but he wants it. Tother day Ma gotone of these orange-colored handkerchiefs, and Pa immediately had asore throat and wanted to wear it, and Ma let him put it on. I thoughtI would break him of taking everything nice that Ma got, so when he wentdown town with the orange handkerchief on his neck, I told some of theSt. Patrick boys in the Third ward, who had green ribbons on, that theold duffer that was putting on style was an orange-man, and he said hecould whip any St. Patrick's Day man in town. The fellers laid for Pa, and when he came along one of them threw a barrel at Pa, and anotherpulled the yellow handkerchief off his neck, and they all yelled 'hanghim, ' and one grabbed a rope that was on the sidewalk where they weremoving a building, and Pa got up and dusted. You'd a dide to see Pa run. He met a policeman and said more'n a hundred men had tried to murderhim, and they had mauled him and stolen his yellow handkerchief. Thepoliceman told Pa his life was not safe, and he better go home and lockhimself in, and he did, and I was telling Ma about how I got the boys toscare Pa, and he heard it, and he told me that settled it. He said I hadcaused him to run more foot races than any champion pedestrian, and hadmade his life unbearable, and now I must go it alone. Now I want youto send a couple of pounds of crackers over to the house, and have yourboy tell the hired girl that I have gone down to the river to drownmyself, and she will tell Ma, and Ma will tell Pa, and pretty soon youwill see a bald headed pussy man whooping it up towards the river witha rope. They may think at times that I am a little tough, but when itcomes to parting forever, they weaken. "Well, the teacher at school says you are a hardened infidel, " said thegrocery man, as he charged the crackers to the boy's Pa. "He says hehad to turn you out to keep you from ruining the morals of the otherscholars. How was that?" "It was about speaking a piece. When I asked him what I should speak, he told me to learn some speech of some great man, some lawyer orstatesman, so I learned one of Bob Ingersoll's speeches. Well, you'd adide to see the teacher and the school committee, when I started in onBob Ingersoll's lecture, the one that was in the papers when Bob washere. You see I thought if a newspaper that all the pious folks takesin their families, could publish Ingersoll's speech, it wouldn't do anyhurt for a poor little boy, who ain't knee high to a giraffe, to speakit in school, but they made me dry up. The teacher is a republican, and when Ingersoll was speaking around here on politix, the time of theelection, the teacher said Bob was the smartest man this country everproduced. I heard him say that in a corcus, when he went bumming aroundthe ward settin' 'em up nights specting to be superintendent of schools. He said Bob Ingersoll just took the cake, and I think it was darn meanin him to go back on Bob and me too, just cause there was no 'lection. The school committee made the teacher stop me, and they asked me ifI didn't know any other piece to speak, and I told them I knew one ofBeecher's, and they let me go ahead, but it was one of Beecher's newones where he said he didn't believe in any hell, and afore I got warmedup they said that was enough of that, and I had to wind up on "Mary hada Little Lam. " None of them didn't kick on Mary's Lam and I went throughit, and they let me go home. That's about the safest thing a boy canspeak in school, now days, either "Mary had a Little Lam, " or "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. " That's about up to the average intelleck of thecommittee. But if a boy tries to branch out as a statesman, they chokehim off. Well, I am going down to the river, and I will leave my coatand hat by the wood yard, and get behind the wood, and you steer Pa downthere and you will see some tall weeping over them clothes, and maybe Pawill jump in after me, and then I will come out from behind the woodand throw in a board for him to swim ashore on. Good bye. Give my pocketcomb to my chum, " and the boy went out and hung up a sign in front ofthe grocery, as follows: POP CORN THAT THE CAT HAS SLEPT IN, CHEAP FOR POP CORN BALLS FOR SOCIABLES. CHAPTER VII. HIS MA DECEIVES HIM--THE BAD BOY IN SEARCH OF SAFFRON-- "WELL, IT'S A GIRL IF YOU MUST KNOW"--THE BAD BOY IS GRIEVED AT HIS MA'S DECEPTION--"S-H-H TOOTSY GO TO SLEEP"--"BY LOW, BABY"--THAT SETTLED IT WITH THE CAT--A BABY! BAH! IT MAKES ME TIRED. "Give me ten cents worth of saffron, quick, " said the bad boy to thegrocery man, as he came in the grocery on a gallop, early one morning, with no collar on and no vest. He looked as though he had been routedout of bed in a hurry and had jumped into his pants and boots, and puton his coat and hat on the run. "I don't keep saffron, " said the grocery man as he picked up a barrel ofax-handles the boy had tipped over in his hurry. "You want to go over tothe drug store on the corner, if you want saffron. But what on earth isthe mat--" At this point the boy shot out of the door, tipping over a basket ofwhite beans, and disappeared in the drug store. The grocery man got downon his knees on the sidewalk, and scooped up the beans, occasionallylooking over to the drug store, and just as he got them picked up, theboy came out of the drug store and walked deliberately towards his homeas though there was no particular hurry. The grocery man looked afterhim, took up an ax-handle, spit on his hands, and shouted to the boy tocome over pretty soon, as he wanted to talk with him. The boy did notcome to the grocery till towards night; but the grocery man had seen himrunning down town a dozen times during the day and once he rode up tothe house with the doctor, and the grocer surmised what was the trouble. Along towards night the boy came in in a dejected sort of a tired way, sat down on a barrel of sugar, and never spoke. "What is it, a boy or girl, " said the grocery man, winking at an oldlady with a shawl over her head, who was trying to hold a paper over apitcher of yeast with her thumb. "How in blazes did you know anything about it?" said the boy, as helooked around in astonishment, and with some indignation. "Well, it'sa girl, if you must know, and that's enough, " and he looked down at thecat playing on the floor with a potato, his face a picture of dejection. "O, don't feel bad about it, " said the grocery man, as he opened thedoor for the old lady. "Such things are bound to occur; but you take myword for it, that young one is going to have a hard life unless you mendyour ways. You will be using it for a cork to a jug, or to wad a gunwith, the first thing your Ma knows. " "I wouldn't touch the darn thing with the tongs, " said the boy, ashe rallied enough to eat some crackers and cheese. "Gosh, this cheesetastes good. I hain't had noth-to eat since morning. I have been allover this town trolling for nurses. They think a boy hasn't got anyfeelings. But I wouldn't care a goldarn, if Ma hadn't been sending mefor neuralgia medicine, and hay fever stuff all winter, when she wantedto get rid of me. I have come into the room lots of times when Ma andthe sewing girl were at work on some flannel things, and Ma would hidethem in a basket and send me off after medicine. I was deceived up toabout four o clock this morning, when Pa come to my room and pulled meout of bed to go over on the West Side after some old woman that knewMa, and they have kept me whooping ever since. What does a boy want ofa sister, unless it is a big sister. I don't want no sister that I havegot to hold, and rock, and hold a bottle for. This affair breaks me allup, " and the boy picked the cheese out of his teeth with a sliver he cutfrom the counter. "Well, how does your Pa take it?" asked the grocery man, as he chargedthe boy's Pa with cheese, and saffron, and a number of such things. "O, Pa will pull through. He wanted to boss the whole concern until Ma'schum, an old woman that takes snuff, fired him out into the hall. Pa satthere on my hand-sled, a perfect picture of dispair, and I thought itwould be a kindness to play in on him. I found the cat asleep in thebath-room, and I rolled the cat up in a shawl and brought it out to Paand told him the nurse wanted him to hold the baby. It seemed to do Pagood to feel that he was indispensible around the house, and he tookthe cat on his lap as tenderly as you ever saw a mother hold her infant. Well, I got in the back hall, where he couldn't see me, and pretty soonthe cat began to wake up and stretch himself, and Pa said 's-h-h-tootsy, go to sleep now, and let its Pa hold it, ' and Pa he rocked back andforth on the hand sled and began to sing 'by, low, baby. ' That settledit with the cat. " [Illustration: By low baby 066] "Well, some cats can't stand music, anyway, and the more the catwanted to get out of the shawl, the louder Pa sung, and bimeby I heardsomething-rip, and Pa yelled, 'scat you brute, ' and when I lookedaround the corner of the hall the cat was bracing hisself against Pa'svest with his toe nails, and yowling, and Pa fell over the sled andbegan to talk about the hereafter like the minister does when he getsexcited in church, and then Pa picked up the sled and seemed to belooking for me or the cat, but both of us was offul scarce. Don't youthink there are times when boys and cats are kind of few around theiraccustomed haunts? Pa don't look as though he was very smart, but he canhold a cat about as well as the next man. But I am sorry for Ma. She wasjust getting ready to go to Florida for her neuralgia, and this will puta stop to it, cause she has to stay and take care of that young one. Pasays I will have a nice time this summer pushing the baby wagon. Bythe great horn spoons, there has got to be a dividing line somewhere, between business and pleasure, and I strike the line at wheeling ababy. I had rather catch a string of perch than to wheel all the babiesever was. They needn't procure no baby on my account, if it is to amuseme. I don't see why babies can't be sawed off onto people that need themin their business. Our folks don't need a baby any more than you need asafe, and there are people just suffering for babies. Say, how would itbe to take the baby some night and leave it on some old batchelor's doorstep. If it had been a bicycle, or a breech loading shot-gun, I wouldn'thave cared, but a baby! Bah! It makes me tired. I'd druther have a prizepackage. Well, I am sorry Pa allowed me to come home, after he droveme away last week. I guess all he wanted me to come back for was tohumiliate me, and send me on errands. Well, I must go and see if he andthe cat have made up. " And the boy went out and put a paper sign in front of the store: LEAVE YOUR MEASURE FOR SAFFRON TEA. CHAPTER VIII. THE BABY AND THE GOAT--THE BAD BOY THINKS HIS SISTER WILL BE A FIRE ENGINE--"OLD NUMBER TWO "--BABY REQUIRES GOAT MILK-- THE GOAT IS FRISKY--TAKES TO EATING ROMAN CANDLES--THE OLD MAN, THE HIRED GIRL AND THE GOAT--THE BAD BOY BECOMES TELLER IN A LIVERY STABLE. "Well, how is the baby?" asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as hecame into the grocery smelling very "horsey, " and sat down on the chairwith the back gone, and looked very tired. "O, darn the baby. Everybody asks me about the baby as though it wasmine. I don't pay no attention to the darn thing, except to notice thefoolishness going on around the house. Say, I guess that baby will growup to be a fire engine. The nurse coupled the baby onto a section ofrubber hose that runs down into a bottle of milk, and it began to get upsteam and pretty soon the milk began to disappear, just like the waterdoes when a fire engine couples on to a hydrant. Pa calls the baby "OldNumber Two. " I am "Number One, " and if Pa had a hook and ladder truckand a hose cart, and a fire gong he would imagine he was chief engineerof the fire department. But the baby kicks on this milk wagon milk, andhowls like a dog that's got lost. The doctor told Pa the best thing hecould do was to get a goat, but Pa said since we 'nishiated him into theMasons with the goat he wouldn't have a goat around no how. The doc toldPa the other kind of a goat, I think it was a Samantha goat hesaid, wouldn't kick with its head, and Pa sent me up into the Polacksettlement to see if I couldn't borrow a milk goat for a few weeks. Igot a woman to lend us her goat till the baby got big enough to chewbeef, for a dollar a week, and paid a dollar in advance, and Pa went upin the evening to help me get the goat. Well it was the darndest mistakeyou ever see. There was two goats so near alike you could not tell whichwas the goat we leased, and the other goat was the chum of our goat, but it belonged to a Nirish woman. We got a bed cord hitched around theIrish goat, and that goat didn't recognize the lease, and when we triedto jerk it along it rared right up, and made things real quick for Pa. I don't know what there is about a goat that makes it get so spunky, butthat goat seemed to have a grudge against Pa from the first. If therewere any places on Pa's manly form that the goat did not explore, withhis head, Pa don't know where the places are. O, it lammed him, andwhen I laffed Pa got mad. I told him every man ought to furnish his owngoats, when he had a baby, and I let go the rope and started off, and Pasaid he knew how it was, I wanted him to get killed. It wasn't that, butI saw the Irish woman that owned the goat coming around the corner ofthe house with a cistern pole. Just as Pa was getting the goat out ofthe gate the goat got cross ways of the gate, and Pa yanked, and doubledthe goat right up, and I thought he had broke the goats neck, and thewoman thought so too, for she jabbed Pa with the cistern pole justbelow the belt, and she tried to get a hold on Pa's hair, but he had herthere. No woman can get the advantage of Pa that way 'cause Ma has triedit. Well, Pa explained it to the woman, and she let Pa off if he wouldpay her two dollars for damages to her goat, and he paid it, and then wetook the nanny goat, and it went right along with us. But I have gotmy opinion of a baby that will drink goat's milk. Gosh, it is like thisstuff that comes in a spoiled cocoanut. The baby hasn't done anythingbut blat since the nurse coupled it onto the goat hydrant. I had to takeall my playthings out of the basement to keep the goat from eating them. I guess the milk will taste of powder and singed hair now. The goat gotto eating some Roman candles me and my chum had laid away in the coalbin, and chewed them around the furnace, and the powder leaked out anda coal fell out of the furnace on the hearth, and you'd a dide to seePa and the hired girl and the goat. You see Pa can't milk nothing buta milk wagon, and he got the hired girl to milk the goat, and they werejust hunting around the basement for the goat, with a tin cup, when thefireworks went off. " [Illustration: The old man, the hired girl and the goat 074] "Well, there was balls of green, and red and blue fire, and spilledpowder blazed up, and the goat just looked astonished, and looked on asthough it was sorry so much good fodder was spoiled, but when its hairbegan to burn, the goat gave one snort and went between Pa and the hiredgirl like it was shot out of a cannon, and it knocked Pa over a washboiler into the coal bin, and the hired girl in amongst the kindlingwood, and she crossed herself and repeated the catekism, and the goatjumped up on the brick furnace, and they couldn't get it down. I heardthe celebration and went down and took Pa by the pants and pulled himout of the coal bin, and he said he would surrender, and plead guilty ofbeing the biggest fool in Milwaukee. I pulled the kindling wood off thehired girl, and then she got mad, and said she would milk the goat ordie. O, that girl has got sand. She used to work in the glass factory. Well, sir, it was a sight worth two shillings admission, to see thathired girl get upon a step ladder to milk that goat on top of thefurnace, with Pa sitting on a barrel of potatoes, bossing the job. Theyare going to fix a gang plank to get the goat down off the furnace. Thebaby kicked on the milk last night. I guess besides tasting of powderand burnt hair, the milk was too warm on account of the furnace. Pa hasgot to grow a new lot of hair on that goat, or the woman won't take itback. She don't want no bald goat. Well, they can run the baby and goatto suit themselves, 'cause I have resigned. I have gone into business. Don't you smell anything that would lead you to surmise that I had goneinto business? No drugstore this time, " and the boy got up and put histhumbs in the armholes of his vest, and looked proud. "O, I don't know as I smell anything except the faint odor of a horseblanket. What you gone into anyway?" and the grocery man put thewrapping paper under the counter, and put the red chalk in his pocket, so the boy couldn't write any sign to hang up outside. "You hit it the first time I have accepted a situation of teller in alivery stable, " said the boy, as he searched around for the barrel ofcut sugar, which had been removed. "Teller in a livery stable! Well that is a new one on me. What is ateller in a livery stable?" and the grocery man looked pleased, andpointed the boy to a barrel of seven cent sugar. "Don't you know what a teller is in a livery stable? It is the same asa teller in a bank. I have to grease the harness, oil the buggies, andcurry off the horses, and when a man comes in to hire a horse I have togo down to the saloon and tell the livery man. That's what a teller is. I like the teller part of it; but greasing harness is a little toorich for my blood, but the livery man says if I stick to it I will begovernor some day, 'cause most all the great men have begun life takingcare of horses. It all depends on my girl whether I stick or not. If shelikes the smell of horses I shall be a statesman, but if she objectsto it and sticks up her nose, I shall not yearn to be governor, at theexpense of my girl. It beats all, don't it, that wimmen settle everygreat question. Everybody does everything to please wimmen, and if theykick on anything that settles it. But I must go and umpire that gamebetween Pa, and the hired girl, and the goat. Say, can't you come overand see the baby? 'Taint bigger than a small satchel, " and the boywaited till the grocery man went to draw some vinegar, when he slippedout and put up a sign written on a shingle with white chalk: YELLOW SAND WANTED FOR MAPLE SUGAR. CHAPTER IX. A FUNERAL PROCESSION--THE BAD BOY ON CRUTCHES--"YOU OUGHT TO SEE THE MINISTER!"--AN ELEVEN DOLLAR FUNERAL--THE MINISTER TAKES THE LINES--AN EARTHQUAKE--AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE WAS OVER--THE POLICEMAN FANS THE MINISTER--A MINISTER SHOULD HAVE SENSE. "Well, great Julius Cæsar's bald-headed ghost, what's the matter withyou?" said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came into the groceryon crutches, with one arm in a sling, one eye blackened, and a strip ofcourt plaster across his face "Where was the explosion, or have youbeen in a fight, or has your Pa been giving you what you deserve, with aclub? Here, let me help you; there, sit down on that keg of apple-jack. Well, by the great guns, you look as though you had called somebodya liar. What's the matter?" and the grocery man took the crutches andstood them up against the show case. "O, there's not much the matter with me, " said the boy, in a voice thatsounded all broke up, as he took a big apple off a basket, and beganpeeling it with his upper front teeth. "If you think I am a wreck, youought to see the minister. They had to carry him home in installments, the way they buy sewing machines. I am all right; but they have got tostop him up with oakum and tar, before he will hold water again!" "Good gracious, you have not had a fight with the minister, have you?Well, I have said all the time, and I stick to it, that you would commita crime yet, and go to state prison. What was the fuss about?" and thegrocery man laid the hatchet out of the boy's reach for fear he wouldget excited and kill him. "O, I want no fuss, it was in the way of business. You see the liveryman that I was working for promoted me. He let me drive a horse to haulsawdust for bedding, first, and when he found I was real careful he letme drive an express wagon to haul trunks. Day before yesterday, I thinkit was--yes, I was in bed all day yesterday--day before yesterdaythere was a funeral, and our stable furnished the outfit. It was only acommon, eleven dollar funeral, so they let me go to drive the horse forthe minister--you know, the buggy that goes ahead of the hearse. Theygave me an old horse that is thirty years old, that has not been off ofa walk since nine years ago, and they told me to give him a loose rein, and he would go along all right. It's the same old horse that used topace so fast on the avenue, years ago, but I didn't know it. Well, I wan't to blame. I just let him walk along as though he was haulingsawdust, and gave him a loose rein. When we got off of the pavement, thefellow that drives the hearse, he was in a hurry, 'cause his folks wasgoing to have ducks for dinner, and he wanted to get back, so he keptdriving along side of my buggy, and telling me to hurry up. I wouldn'tdo it, 'cause the livery man told me to walk the horse. Then theminister, he got nervous, and said he didn't know as there was any useof going so slow, because he wanted to get back in time to get his lunchand go to a minister's meeting in the afternoon, but I told him we wouldall get to the cemetery soon enough if we took it cool, and as for meI wasn't in no sweat. Then one of the drivers that was driving themourners, he came up and said he had to get back in time to run awedding down to the one o'clock train, and for me to pull out a little. I have seen enough of disobeying orders, and I told him a funeral in thehand was worth two weddings in the bush, and as far as I was concerned, this funeral was going to be conducted in a decorous manner, if wedidn't get back till the next day. Well, the minister said, in hisregular Sunday school way, 'My little man, let me take hold of thelines, ' and like a darn fool I gave them to him. He slapped the oldhorse on the crupper with the lines, and then jerked up, and the oldhorse stuck up his off ear, and then the hearse driver told the ministerto pull hard and saw on the bit a little, and the old horse would wakeup. The hearse driver used to drive the old pacer on the track, and heknew what he wanted. The minister took off his black kid gloves and puthis umbrella down between us, and pulled his hat down tight on his head, and began to pull and saw on the bit. The old cripple began to movealong sort of sideways, like a hog going to war, and the minister pulledsome more, and the hearse driver, who was right behind, he said, soyou could hear him clear to Waukesha, 'Ye-e-up, ' and the old horse keptgoing faster, then the minister thought the procession was getting tooquick, and he pulled harder, and yelled 'who-a' and that made the oldhorse worse, and I looked through the little window in the buggy top. Behind, and the hearse was about two blocks behind, and the driver waslaughing, and the minister he got pale and said, 'My little man I guessyou better drive, ' and I said 'Not much Mary Ann, you wouldn't let merun this funeral the way I wanted to, and now you can boss it, if youwill let me get out, ' but there was a street car ahead and all of asudden there was an earthquake, and when I come to there were about sixhundred people pouring water down my neck, and the hearse was hitched tothe fence, and the hearse driver was asking if my leg was broke, and apoliceman was fanning the minister with a plug hat that looked as thoughit had been struck by a pile driver, and some people were hauling ourbuggy into the gutter, and some men were trying to take old pacer out ofthe windows of the street-car, and then I guess I fainted away agin. O, it was worse than telescoping a train loaded with cattle. " [Illustration: After the earthquake was over 084] "Well, I swan, " said the grocery man, as he put some eggs in a funnelshaped brown paper for a servant girl. "What did the minister say whenhe come to?" "Say! What could he say? He just yelled 'whoa, ' and kept sawing with hishands, as though he was driving. I heard that the policeman was going topull him for fast driving, till he found it was an accident. They toldme, when they carried me home in a hack, that it was a wonder everybodywas not killed, and when I got home Pa was going to sass me, until thehearse driver told him it was the minister that was to blame. I want tofind out if they got the minister's umbrella back. The last I see of itthe umbrella was running up his trouser's leg, and the point come outby the small of his back. But I am all right, only my shoulder sprained, and my legs bruised, and my eye black. I will be all right, and shall goto work to-morrow, 'cause the livery man says I was the only one in thecrowd that had any sense. I understand the minister is going to take avacation on account of his liver and nervous prostration. I would if Iwas him. I never saw a man that had nervous prostration any more than hedid when they fished him out of the barbed wire fence, after we struckthe street car. But that settles the minister business with me. I don'tdrive for no more preachers. What I want is a quiet party that wantsto go on a walk, " and the boy got up and hopped on one foot towards hiscrutcher, filling his pistol pocket with fig he hobbled along. "Well, sir, " said the grocery man, as he took a chew of tobacco out ofa pail, and offered some to the boy, knowing that was the only thingin the store the boy would not take, "Do you know I think some of theseministers have about as little sense on worldly matters, as anybody?Now, the idea of that man jerking on an old pacer. It don't make anydifference if the pacer was hundred years old, he _would_ pace if he wasjerked on. " "You bet, " said the boy, as he put his crutches under his arms, andstarted for the door. "A minister may be sound on the Atonement, buthe don't want to saw on an old pacer. He may have the subject of infantbaptism down finer than a cambric needle, but if he has ever been tocollege, he ought to have learned enough not to say '_ye up_' to an oldpacer that has been the boss of the road in his time. A minister may beendowed with sublime power to draw sinners to repentance, and make themfeel like getting up and dusting for the beautiful beyond, and causethem, by his eloquence, to see angles bright and fair in their dreams, and chariots of fire flying through the pearly gates and down the goldenstreets of New Jerusalem, but he wants to turn out for a street carall the same, when he is driving a 2:20 pacer. The next time I drive aminister to a funeral, he will walk, " and the boy hobbled out and hungout a sign in front of the grocery: SMOKED DOG FISH AT HALIBUT PRICES, GOOD ENOUGH FOR COMPANY. CHAPTER X. THE OLD MAN MAKES A SPEECH--THE GROCERYMAN AND THE BAD BOY HAVE A FUSS--THE BOHEMIAN BAND--THE BAD BOY ORGANIZES A SERENADE--"BABY MINE"--THE OLD MAN ELOQUENT--THE BOHEMIANS CREATE A FAMINE--THE Y. M. C. A. ANNOUNCEMENT. "There, you drop that, " said the groceryman to the bad boy, as hecame limping into the store, and began to fumble around a box ofstrawberries. "I have never kicked at your eating my codfish, andcrackers and cheese, and herring, and apples, but there has got to be adividing line somewhere, and I make it at strawberries at six shillingsa box, and only two layers in a box. I only bought one box, hoping someplumber, or gas man would come along and buy it, and by gum, everybodythat has been in the store has sampled a strawberry out of that box. Shivered as though it was sour, and gone off without asking the price, "and the grocery man looked mad, took a hatchet and knocked in the headof a barrel of apples, and said, "There, help yourself to dried apples. " "O, I don't want your strawberries or dried apples, " said the boy, as heleaned against a show case and looked at a bar of red, transparent soap. "I was only trying to fool you. Say, that bar of soap is old enough tovote. I remember seeing it in your show case when I was about a yearold, and Pa came in here with me and held me up to the show case tolook at that tin tobacco box, and that round zinc looking-glass, andthe yellow wooden pocket comb, and the soap looks just the same, onlya little faded. If you would wash yourself once in a while your soapwouldn't dry up on your hands, " and the boy sat down on the chairwithout any back, feeling that he was even with the grocery man. "You never mind the soap. It is paid for, and that is more than yourfather can say about the soap that has been used in his house the pastmonth, " said the grocery man, as he split up a box to kindle the fire. "But we won't quarrel. What was it I heard about a band serenading yourfather, and his inviting them in to lunch?" "Don't let that get out or Pa will kill me dead. It was a joke. One ofthose Bohemian bands that goes about town playing tunes for pennies, wasover on the next street, and I told Pa I guessed some of his friends whohad heard we had a baby at the house, had hired a band and was coming ina few minutes to serenade him, and he better prepare to make a speech. Pa is proud of being a father at his age, and he thought it no more thanright for the neighbors to serenade him, and he went to loading himselffor a speech, in the library, and me and my chum went out and told theleader of the band there was a family up there that wanted to have somemusic, and they didn't care for expense, so they quit blowing where theywas and came right along. None of them could understand English exceptthe leader, and he only understood enough to go and take a drink whenhe is invited. My chum steered the band up to our house and got them toplay 'Babies on our Block, ' and 'Baby Mine, ' and I stopped all the menwho were going home and told them to wait a minute and they wouldsee some fun, so when the band got through the second tune, and thePrussians were emptying the beer out of the horns, and Pa stepped outon the porch, there was more nor a hundred people in front of the house. You'd a dide to see Pa when he put his hand in the breast of his coat, and struck an attitude. He looked like a congressman, or a tramp. Theband was scared, cause they thought he was mad, and some of them weregoing to run, thinking he was going to throw pieces of brick houseat them, but my chum and the leader kept them. Then Pa sailed in. Hecommenced, 'Fellow Citizens, ' and then went way back to Adam and Eve, and worked up to the present day, giving a history of the notable peoplewho had acquired children, and kept the crowd interested. I felt sorryfor Pa, cause I knew how he would feel when he came to find out howhe had been sold. The Bohemians in the band that couldn't understandEnglish, they looked at each other, and wondered what it was all about, and finally Pa wound up by stating that it was every citizen's duty toown children of his own, and then he invited the band and the crowd into take some refreshments. Well, you ought to have seen that band comein the house. They fell over each other getting in, and the crowd wenthome, leaving Pa and my chum and me and the band. Eat? Well, I shouldsmile. They just reached f'or things, and talked Bohemian. Drink? O, no. I guess they didn't pour it down. Pa opened a dozen bottles ofchampagne, and they fairly bathed in it, as though they had a fireinside. Pa tried to talk with them about the baby, but they couldn'tunderstand, and finally they got full and started out, and the leaderasked Pa for three dollars, and that broke him. Pa told the leader hesupposed the gentlemen who had got up the serenade had paid for themusic, and the leader pointed to me and said I was the gentleman thatgot it up. Pa paid him, but he had a wicked look in his eye, and me andmy chum lit out, and the Bohemians came down the street bilin' full, with their horns on their arms, and they were talking Bohemian for allthat was out. They stopped in front of a vacant house, and began toplay; but you couldn't tell what tune it was, they were so full, and apoliceman came along and drove them home. I guess I will sleep at thelivery stable to-night, cause Pa is so offul unreasonable when anythingcosts him three dollars, besides the champagne. " "Well, you have made a pretty mess of it, " said the grocery man. "It'sa wonder your Pa does not kill you. But what is it I hear about thetrouble at the church? They lay that foolishness to you. " "It's all a lie. They lay everything to me. It was some of them ducksthat sing in the choir. I was just as much surprised as anybody when itoccurred. You see our minister is laid up from the effect of the ride tothe funeral, when he tried to run over a street car; and an old deaconwho had symptoms of being a minister in his youth, was invited to takethe minister's place, and talk a little. He is an absent minded oldparty, who don't keep up with the events of the day, and whoever playedit on him knew that he was too pious to even read the daily papers. There was a notice of a choir meeting to be read, and I think the tenorsmuggled in the other notice between that and the one about the weeklyprayer meeting. Anyway, it wasn't me, but it like to broke up themeeting After the deacon read the choir notice he took up the other oneand read, 'I am requested to announce that the Y. M. C. Association willgive a friendly entertainment with soft gloves, on Tuesday evening, to which all are invited. Brother John Sullivan, the eminent Bostonrevivalist will lead the exercises, assisted by Brother Slade, the Maorimissionary from Australia. There will be no slugging, but a collectionwill be taken up at the door to defray expenses. ' Well, I though thepeople in church would sink through the floor. There was not a personin the church except the poor old deacon, but who understood that somewicked wretch had deceived him, and I know by the way the tenor tickledthe soprano that he did it. I may be mean, but everything I do isinnocent, and I wouldn't be as mean as a choir singer for two dollars. Ifelt real sorry for the old deacon, but he never knew what he haddone, and I think it would be real mean to tell him. He won't be at theslugging match. That remark about taking up a collection settled thedeacon. I must go down to the stable now, and help grease a hack, soyou will have to excuse me. If Pa comes here looking for me, tell him youheard I was going to drive a picnic party out to Waukesha, and may notbe back in a week. By that time Pa will have got over that Bohemianserenade, " and the boy filled his pistol pocket with dried apples, andwent out and hung a sign in front of the grocery: STRAWBERRIES, TWO SHILLINGS A SMELL; AND ONE SMELL IS ENOUGH. CHAPTER XI. GARDENING UNDER DIFFICULTIES--THE GROCERY MAN IS DECEIVED-- THE BAD BOY DON'T LIKE MOVING--GOES INTO THE COLORING BUSINESS--THE OLD MAN THOROUGHLY DISGUISED--UNCLE TOM AND TOPSY--THE OLD MAN ARRESTED--WHAT THE GROCERY MAN THINKS-- THE BAD BOY MORALIZES ON HIS FATE--RESOLVES TO BE GOOD. "See here, you coon, you get out of here, " said the grocery man to thebad boy, as he came in the store with his face black and shining, "Idon't want any colored boys around here. White boys break me up badenough. " "O, philopene, " said the bad boy, as he put his hands on his knees andlaughed so the candy jars rattled on the shelves. "You didn't know me. Iam the same boy that comes in here and talks your arm off, " and the boyopened the cheese box and cut off a piece of cheese so natural that thegrocery man had no difficulty in recognizing him. "What in the name of the seven sleeping sisters have you got on yourhands and face, " said the grocery man, as he took the boy by the ear andturned him around, "You would pass in a colored prayer meeting, andno one would think you were galvanized. What you got up in such anoutlandish rig for?" "Well, I'll tell you, if you will keep watch at the door. If you seea bald-headed colored man coming along the street with a club, youwhistle, and I will fall down cellar. The bald-headed colored man willbe Pa. You see, we moved yesterday. Pa told me to get a vacation fromthe livery stable, and we would have fun moving. But I don't want anymore fun. I know when I have got enough fun. Pa carried all the lightthings, and when it came to lifting, he had a crick in the back. Gosh, Inever was so tired as I was last night, and I hope we have got settled, only some of the goods haven't turned up yet. A drayman took one loadover on the west side, and delivered them to a house that seemed to beexpecting a load of household furniture. He thought it was all right, ifeverybody that was moving got a load of goods. Well, after we got movedPa said we must make a garden, and we said we would go out and spadeup the ground and sow peas, and radishes, and beets. There was someneighbors lived in the next house to our new one, that was all wimmen, and Pa don't like to have them think he had to work, so he said it wouldbe a good joke to disguise ourselves as tramps, and the neighbors wouldthink we had hired some tramps to dig in the garden. I told Pa of a bossscheme to fool them. I suggested that we take some of his shoe blackingthat is put on with a sponge, and black our faces, and the neighborswould think we had hired an old colored man and his boy to work in thegarden. Pa said it was immense, and he told me to go and black up, andif it worked he would black hisself. So I went and put this burnt corkon my face, 'cause it would wash off, and Pa looked at me and said itwas wack, and for me to fix him up too. So I got the bottle of shoeblacking and painted Pa so he looked like a colored coal heaver. Actually, when Ma saw him she ordered him off the premises, and when helaffed at her and acted sassy, she was going to throw biling water onPa. But I told her the scheme and she let up on Pa. O, you'd a dide tosee us out in the garden. Pa looked like uncle Tom, and I looked likeTopsy, only I ain't that kind of a colored person. " [Illustration: Uncle Tom and Topsy 098] "We worked till a boy throwed some tomato cans over the ally fence andhit me, and I piled over the fence after him and left Pa. It was mychum, and when I had caught him we put up a job to get Pa to chase us. We throwed some more cans, and Pa come out and my chum started and Iafter him, and Pa after both of us. He chased us two blocks and then wegot behind a policeman, and my chum told the policeman it was a crazyold colored man that wanted to kidnap us, and the policeman took Pa bythe neck and was going to club him, but Pa said he would go home andbehave. He was offul mad, and he went home and we looked through thealley fence and saw Pa trying to wash off the blacking. You see thatblacking won't wash off. You have to wear it off. Pa would wash his facewith soap suds, and then look in the glass, and he was blacker everytimehe washed, and when Ma laffed at him he said the offulest words, something like 'sweet spirit hear my prayer, ' then he washed himselfagain. I am going to leave my burnt cork on, cause if I washed it offPa would know there had been some smouging somewhere. I asked the shoestore man how long it would take the blacking to wear off, and he saidit ought to wear off in a week. I guess Pa won't go out doors much, unless it is in the night. I am going to get him to let me go off in thecountry fishing, till mine wears off, and when I get out of town I willwash up. Say, you don't think a little blacking hurts a man's complexiondo you, and you don't think a man ought to get mad because it won't washoff, do you?" "O, probably it don't hurt the complexion, " said the grocery man, as hesprinkled some fresh water on the wilted lettuce, so it would look freshwhile the hired girl was buying some, "and yet it is mighty unpleasant, where a man has got an engagement to go to a card party, as I know yourPa has to-night. As to getting mad about it, if I was your Pa I wouldtake a barrel stave and shatter your castle scandalous. What kind of afate do you think awaits you when you die, anyway?" "Well, I am mixed on the fate that awaits me when I die. If I should gooff sudden, with all my sins on my head, and this burnt cork on my face, I should probably be a neighbor to you, way down below, and they wouldgive me a job as fireman, and I should feel bad for you every time Ichucked in a nuther chunk of brimstone, and thought of you trying toswim dog fashion in the lake of fire, and straining your eyes to find aniceberg that you could crawl up on to cool your parched hind legs. If Idon't die slow so I will have time to repent, and be saved, I shall betoasted brown. That's what the minister says, and they wouldn't pay himtwo thousand dollars a year and give him a vacation to tell anythingthat was not so. I tell you it is painful to think of that place thatso many pretty fair average people here are going to when they die. Justthink of it, a man that swears just once, if he don't hedge, and take itback will go to the bad place. If a person steals a pin, just a small, no account pin, he is as bad as if he stole all there was in a bank, and he stands the best chance of going to the bad place. You see, if afellow steals a little thing like a pin, he forgets to repent, cause itdon't seem to be worth while to make so much fuss about. But if a fellowrobs a bank, or steals a whole lot of money from orphans, he knows it isa mighty serious matter, and he gets in his work repenting, too quick, and he is liable to get to the good place, while you, who have onlystole a few potatoes out of a bushel that you sold to the orphan asylum, will forget to repent, and you will sizzle. I tell you, the more I readabout being good, and going to Heaven, the more I think a feller can'tbe too careful, and from this out you won't find a better boy than I am. When I come in here after this and take a few dried peaches or crackersand cheese, you charge it right up to Pa, and then I won't have it on mymind and have to answer for it at the great judgment day. I am going toshake my chum, cause he chews tobacco, which is wicked, though I don'tsee how that can be, when the minister smokes, but I want to be on thesafe side. I am going to be good or bust a suspender, and hereafter youcan point to me as a boy who has seen the folly of an ill-spent life, and if there is such a thing as a fifteen year old boy, who has been aterror, getting to heaven, I am the hairpin. I tell you, when I listento the minister tell about the angels flying around there, and I seepictures of them purtier than any girl in this town, with chubby armswith dimples in the elbows and shoulders, and long golden hair, andthink of myself here cleaning off horses in a livery stable and smellinglike an old harness, it makes me tired, and I wouldn't miss going therefor ten dollars. Say, you would make a healthy angel, for a back streetof the new Jerusalem, but you would give the whole crowd away unlessyou washed up, and sent that shirt to the Chinese laundry. Yes, sir, hereafter you will find me as good as I know how to be. Now I am goingto wash up and go and help the minister move. " As the boy went out the grocery man sat for several minutes thinking ofthe change that had come over the bad boy, and wondered what had broughtit about, and then he went to the door to watch him as he wended his wayacross the street with his head down, as though in deep thought, andthe grocery man said to himself, "that boy is not as bad as some peoplethink he is, " and then he looked around and saw a sign hanging up infront of the store, written on a piece of box cover, with blue pencil:-- SPOILED CANNED HAM AND TONGUE, GOOD ENOUGH FOR CHURCH PICNICS. and he looked after the boy who was slipping down an alley and said, "The condemn little whelp. Wait till I catch him. " CHAPTER XII. THE OLD MAN SHOOTS THE MINISTER--THE BAD BOY TRIES TO LEAD A DIFFERENT LIFE--MURDER IN THE AIR--THE OLD MAN AND HIS FRIENDS GIVE THEMSELVES AWAY-DREADFUL STORIES OF THEIR WICKED YOUTH--THE CHICKEN COOP INVADED--THE OLD MAN TO THE RESCUE--THE MINISTER AND THE DEACONS SALTED. "Say, I thought you was going to try to lead a different life, " said thegrocery man to the bad boy, as the youth came in with his pockets fullof angle worms, and wanted to borrow a baking powder can to put theminto, while he went fishing, and he held a long angle worm up by thetail and let it wiggle so he frightened a girl that had come in aftertwo cents worth of yeast, so she dropped her pitcher and went out of thegrocery as though she was chased by an anaconda. "I am going to lead a different life; but a boy can't change hiswhole course of life in a minute, can he? Grown persons have to go onprobation for six months before they can lead a different life, and halfthe time they lose their cud before the six months expire, and have tocommence again. When it is so alfired hard for a man that is endowedwith sense to break off being bad, you shouldn't expect too much from aboy But I am doing as well as could be expected--I ain't half as bad asI was. Gosh, why don't you burn a rag? That yeast that the girl spilledon the floor smells like it was sick. I should think that bread that wasraised with that yeast would smell like this cooking, butter you sell tohired girls. "Well, never you mind the cooking butter. I know my business. If peoplewant to use poor butter when they have company, and then blow up thegrocer before folks, I can stand it if they can. But what is this I hearabout your Pa fighting a duel with the minister in your back yard, and wounding him in the leg, and then trying to drown himself in thecistern? One of your new neighbors was in here this morning, and toldme there was murder in the air at your house last night, and they weregoing to have the police pull your place as a disorderly house. I thinkyou were at the bottom of the whole business!" "O, its all a darn lie, and those neighbors will find they better keepstill about us, or we will lie about them a little. You see, sincePa got that blacking on his face he don't go out any, and to make itpleasant for him Ma invited in a few friends to spend the evening. Mahas got up around, and the baby is a daisy, only it smells like a goat, on account of drinking the goat's milk. Ma invited the minister, amongthe rest, and after supper the men went up into Pa's library to talk. O, you think I am bad don't you, but of the nine men at our house lastnight I am an angel compared with what they were when they were boys. Igot into the bath room to untangle my fish line, and it is next to Pa'sroom, and I could hear everything they said, but I went away 'cause Ithought the conversation would hurt my morals. They would all steal, when they were boys, but darned if I ever stole. Pa has stolen over ahundred wagon loads of water-melons, one deacon used to rob orchards, another one shot tame ducks belonging to a farmer, and another tippedover grindstones in front of the village store, at night, and brokethem, and run, another used to steal eggs, and go out in the woods andboil them, and the minister was the worst of the lot, 'cause he took aseine, with some other boys, and went to a stream where a neighborwas raising brook trout, and cleaned the stream out, and to ward offsuspicion, he went to the man the next day and paid him a dollar to lethim fish in the stream, and then kicked because there were no trout, andthe owner found the trout were stolen and laid it to some Dutch boys. I wondered, when those men were telling their experience, if they everthought of it now when they were preaching and praying, and taking upcollections. I should think they wouldn't say a boy was going to hellright off 'cause he was a little wild now days, when he has such anexample. Well, lately, somebody has been burgling our chicken coop, and Pa loaded an old musket with rock salt, and said he would fill thefellow full of salt if he caught him, and while they were talking upstairs Ma heard a rooster squawk, and she went to the stairway andtold Pa there was somebody in the hen house. Pa jumped up and told thevisitors to follow him, and they would see a man running down the alleyfull of salt, and he rushed out with the gun, and the crowd followedhim. Pa is shorter than the rest, and he passed under the first wireclothes line in the yard all right, and was going for the hen house ona jump, when his neck caught the second wire clothesline just as theminister and two of the deacons caught their necks under the other wire. You know how a wire, hitting a man on the throat, will set him back, head over appetite. Well, sir, I was looking out of the back window, and I wouldn't be positive, but I think they all turned double backsummersaults, and struck on their ears. Anyway, Pa did, and the gun musthave been cocked, or it struck the hammer on a stone, for it went off, and it was pointed towards the house, and three of the visitors gotsalted. The minister was hit the worse, one piece of salt taking him inthe hind leg, and the other in the back, and he yelled as though it wasdynamite. " [Illustration: The minister and deacons salted 110] "I suppose when you shoot a man with salt, it smarts, like when you getcorned beef brine on your chaped hands. They all yelled, and Pa seemedto have been knocked silly, some way, for he pranced around and seemedto think he he had killed them. He swore at the wire clothes line, andthen I missed Pa and heard a splash like when you throw a cat in theriver, and then I thought of the cistern, and I went down and we took Paby the collar and pulled him out. O, he was awful damp. No sir, it wasno duel at all, but a naxident, and I didn't have anything to do withit. The gun wasn't loaded to kill, and the salt only went through theskin, but those men _did_ yell. May be it was my chum that stirred upthe chickens, but I don't know. He has not commenced to lead a differentlife yet, and he might think it would make our folks sick if nothingoccurred to make them pay at-tion. I think where a family has beenhaving a good deal of exercise, the way ours has, it hurts them to breakoff too suddenly. But the visitors went home, real quick, after we gotPa out of the cistern, and the minister told Ma he always felt when hewas in our house, as though he was on the verge of a yawning crater, ready to be engulfed any minute, and he guessed he wouldn't come anymore. Pa changed his clothes and told Ma to have them wire clothes lineschanged for rope ones. I think it is hard to suit Pa, don't you? "O, your Pa is all right. What he needs is rest. But why are you notworking at the livery stable? You haven't been discharged, have you?"And the grocery man laid a little lump of concentrated lye, that lookedlike maple sugar, on a cake of sugar that had been broken, knowing theboy would nibble it. "No, sir, I was not discharged, but when a livery man lends me a kickinghorse to take my girl out riding, that settles it. I asked the boss ifI couldn't have a quiet horse that would drive himself if I wound thelines around the whip, and he let me have one he said would go all daywithout driving. You know how it is, when a fellow takes a girl outriding he don't want his mind occupied holding lines. Well, I got mygirl in, and we went out on the Whitefish Bay, road, and it was justbefore dark, and we rode along under the trees, and I wound the linesaround the whip, and put one arm around my girl, and patted her underthe chin with my other hand, and her mouth looked so good, and and herblue eyes looked up at me and twinkled as much as to dare me to kissher, and I was all of a tremble, and then my hand wandered around by herear and I drew her head up to me and gave her a smack. Say, that wasno kind of a horse to give to a young fellow to take a girl out riding. Just as I smacked her I felt as though the buggy had been struck witha pile driver, and when I looked at the horse he was running away andkicking the buggy, and the lines were dragging on the ground. I wasscared, I tell you. I wanted to jump out but my girl threw her armsaround my neck and screamed, and said we would die together, and just aswe were going to die the buggy struck a fence and the horse broke looseand went off, leaving us in the buggy, tumbled down by the dash board, but we were not hurt. The old horse stopped and went to chewing grass, and looked up at me as though he wanted to say 'philopene. ' I triedto catch him, but he wouldn't catch, and then we waited till dark andwalked home, and I told the livery man what I thought of such treatment, and he said if I had attended to my driving, and not kissed the girl, Iwould have been all right. He said I ought to have told him I wanted ahorse that wouldn't shy at kissing, but how did I know I was going toget up courage to kiss her. A livery man ought to take it for grantedthat when a young fellow goes out with a girl he is going to kiss her, and give him a horse according. But I quit him at once. I won't workfor a man that hasn't got sense. Gosh! What kind of maple sugar is that?Jerusalem, whew, give me some water. O, my, it is taking the skin off mymouth. " The grocery man got him some water and seemed sorry that the boy hadtaken the lump of concentrated lye by mistake, and when the boy wentout the grocery man pounded his hands on his knees and laughed, andpresently he went out in front of the store and found a sign FRESH LETIS, BEEN PICKED MORE'N A WEEK, TUEFER'N TRIPE. CHAPTER XIII. THE BAD BOY A THOROUGHBRED--THE BAD BOY WITH A BLACK EYE--A POOR FRIENDLESS GIRL EXCITES HIS PITY--PROVES HIMSELF A GALLANT KNIGHT--THE OLD MAN IS CHARMED AT HIS SON'S COURAGE-- THE GROCERY MAN MORALIZES--FIFTEEN CHRISTS IN MILWAUKEE-- THE TABLES TURNED--THE OLD MAN WEARS THE BOY'S OLD CLOTHES. "Ah, ha, you have got your deserts at last, " said the grocery man to thebad boy, as he came in with one eye black, and his nose pealed on onone side, and sat down on a board across the the coal scuttle, and beganwhistling as unconcerned as possible. "What's the matter with your eye?" "Boy tried to gouge it out without my consent, " and the bad boy took adried herring out of the box and began peeling it. "He is in bed now, and his ma is poulticing him, and she says he will be out about the lastof next week. "O, you are going to be a prize fighter, ain't you, " said the groceryman, disgusted. "When a boy leaves a job where he is working, and goesto loafing around, he becomes a fighter the first thing. What your Paought to do is bind you out with a farmer, where you would have to workall the time. I wish you would go away from here, because you looklike one of these fellows that comes up before the police judge Mondaymorning, and gets thirty days in the house of correction. Why don'tyou go out and loaf around a slaughter house, where you would lookappropriate?" and the grocery man took a hair-brush and brushed somesugar and tea, that was on the counter, into the sugar barrel. "Well, if you have got through with your sermon, I will toot a littleon my horn, " and the boy threw the remains of the herring over behinda barrel of potatoes, and wiped his hands on a coffee sack. "If you hadthis black eye, and got it the way I did, it would be a more pricelessgem in the crown of glory you hope to wear, than any gem you can getby putting quarters in the collection plate, with the holes filled withlead, as you did last Sunday, when I was watching you. O, didn't youlook pious when you picked that filled quarter out, and held your thumbover the place where the lead was. The way of the black eye was this. Igot a job tending a soda water fountain, and last night, just before weclosed, there was two or three young loafers in the place, and a girlcame in for a glass of soda Five years ago she was one of the brightestscholars in the ward school, when I was in the intermediate department. She was just as handsome as a peach, and everybody liked her. At recessshe used to take my part when the boys knocked me around and she livednear us. She had a heart as big as that cheese box, and I guess that'swhat's the matter. Anyway, she left school, and then it was said she wasgoing to get married to a fellow who is now in the dude business, but hewent back on her and after awhile her ma turned her out doors, and fora year or two she was jerking beer in a concert saloon, until the mayorstopped concerts. She tried hard to get sewing to do, but they wouldn'thave her, I guess 'cause she cried so much when she was sewing, and thetears wet the cloth she was sewing on. Once I asked Pa why Ma didn'tgive her some sewing to do, and he said for me to dry up and never speakto her if I met her on the street. It seemed tuff to pass her on thestreet, when she had tears in her eyes as big as marbles, and not speakto her when I know her so well, and she had been so kind to me at schooljust 'cause the dude wouldn't marry her, but I wanted to obey Pa, so Iused to walk around a block when I see her coming, 'cause I didn't wantto hurt her feelings. Well, last night she came in the store, lookingpretty shabby, and wanted a glass of soda, and I gave it to her, and O, how her hand trembled when she raised the glass to her lips, and howwet her eyes were, and how pale her face was. I choked up so I couldn'tspeak when she handed me the nickel and when she looked up at me andsmiled just like she used to, and said I was getting to be almost aman since we went to school at the old school house, and put herhandkerchief to her eyes, by gosh, my eyes got so full I couldn't tellwhether is was a nickel or a lozenger she gave me. Just then one ofthose loafers began to laugh at her, and call her names, and say thepolice ought to take her up for stray, and he made fun of her until shecried some more, and I got hot and went around to where he was and toldhim if he said another unkind word to that girl I would maul him. Helaughed and asked if she was my sister, and I told him that a poorfriendless girl, who was sick and in distress, and who was insulted, ought to be every boy's sister, for a minute, and any boy who had aspark of manhood should protect her, and then he laughed and said Iought to be one of the Little Sisters of the Poor, and he took hold ofher faded shawl and pulled the weak girl against the showcase, and saidsomething mean to her, and she looked as though she wanted to die, andI mashed that boy one right on the nose. Well, the air seemed to be fullof me for a minute, 'cause he was bigger than me, and he got me down andgot his thumb in my eye. I guess he was going to take my eye out, but Iturned him over and got on top and I mauled him until he begged, but Iwouldn't let him up till he asked the girl's pardon, and swore he wouldwhip any boy that insulted her, and then I let him up, and the girlthanked me; but I told her I couldn't speak to her 'cause she was tuff, and Pa didn't wan't me to speak to anybody who was tuff; but if anybodyever insulted her so she had to cry, that I would whip him if I had totake a club. I told Pa about it, and I thought he would be mad at me fortaking the part of a girl that was tuff, but, by gosh, Pa hugged me, andthe tears came in his eyes, and he said I had got good blood in me, andI did just right; and if I would show him the father of the boy that Iwhipped, Pa said said he could whip the old man, and Ma said for me tofind the poor girl and send her up to the house, and she would give hera job making pillow cases and night shirts. Don't it seem darn queer toyou that everybody goes back on a poor girl 'cause she makes a mistake, and the blasted whelp that is to blame gets a chromo. It makes me tiredto think of it;" and the boy got up and shook himself, and looked inthe cracked mirror hanging upon a post, to see how his eye was gettingalong. "Say, young fellow, you are a thoroughbred, " said the grocery man, as hesprinkled some water on the asparagus and lettuce, "and you can come inhere and get all the herring you want, and never mind the black eye. Iwish I had it myself. Yes, it does seem tough to see people neverallow a girl to reform. Now, in Bible times, the Savior forgave Mary orsomebody, I forget now what her name was, and she was a better girl thanever. What we need is more of the spirit of Christ, and the world wouldbe better. " "What we want is about ten thousand Christs. We ought to have ten orfifteen right here in Milwaukee, and they would find plenty of business, too. But this climate seems to be too rough. Say, did I tell you aboutPa and Ma having trouble?" "No, what's the row?" "Well, you see Ma wants to economize all she can, and Pa has beengetting thinner since he quit drinking and reformed, and I have kept ongrowing until I am bigger than he is. Funny, ain't it, that a boy shouldbe bigger than his Pa? Pa wanted a new suit of clothes, and Ma said shewould fix him, and so she took one of my old suits and made it over forPa; and he wore them a week before he knew it was on old suit made over, but one day he found a handful of dried up angle worms in the pistolpocket that I had forgot when I was fishing, and Pa laid the angle wormsto Ma, and Ma had to explain that she made over one of my old suits forPa. He was mad and took them off and threw them out the back window, andswore he would never humiliate himself by wearing his son's old clothes. Ma tried to reason with him, but he was awfully worked up, and said hewas no old charity hospital, and he stormed around to find his old suitof clothes, but Ma had sold them to a plaster of Paris image peddlar, and Pa hadn't anything to wear, and he wanted Ma to go out in the alleyand pick up the suit he threw out the window; but a rag man had pickedthem up and was going away, and Pa, he grabbed a linen duster and put iton and went out after the rag picker, and he run, and Pa after him;and the rag man told a policeman there was an escaped lunatic from theasylum, and he was chasing people all over the city, and the policemantook Pa by the linen ulster, and pulled it off, and he was a sight whenthey took him to the police station. Ma and me had to go down and bailhim out, and the police lent us a tarpaulin to put over Pa, and we gothim home, and he is wearing his summer pants while the tailor makes hima new suit of clothes. I think Pa is too excitable, and too particular. I never kicked on wearing Pa's old clothes, and I think he ought to wearmine now. Well, I must go down to the sweetened wind factory, and jerksoda, " and the boy went out and hung up a sign in front of the store: SPINAGE FOB GREENS, THAT THE CAT HAS MADE A NEST IN OVER SUNDAY. CHAPTER XIV. ENTERTAINING Y. M. C. A. DELEGATES--THE BAD BOY MINISTERS AT THE Y. M. C. A. WATER FOUNTAIN--THE DELEGATES FLOOD THEMSELVES WITH SODA--TWO DELEGATES DEALT TO HIS MA--THE NIGHT KEY--THE PALL OF THE FLOWER-STAND--DELEGATES IN THE CELLAR ALL NIGHT--THE BAD BOY'S GIRL IS WORKING HIS REFORMATION. "Well, how's your eye?" said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he blewin with the wind on the day of the cyclone, and left the door open. "Say, shut that door. You want to blow everything out of the store? Hadany more fights, protecting girls from dudes?" "No, everything is quiet so far. I guess since I have got a record as afighter, the boys will be careful who they insult when I am around. ButI have had the hardest week I ever experienced, jerking soda for theYoung Men's Christian Association, " said the boy, as he peeled a banana. "What you mean, boy? Don't cast any reflections on such a nobleAssociation. They don't drink, do they?'' "Drink! O, no! They don't drink anything intoxicating, but when itcomes to soda they flood themselves. You know there has been a NationalConvention of delegates from all the Young Men's Christian Associationsof the whole country, about three hundred, here, and our store is righton the street where they passed four times a day, and I never saw suchappetites for soda. There has been, one continual fizz in our storesince Wednesday. The boss wanted me to play it on some of them byputting some brandy in with the perfumery a few times, but I wouldn'tdo it. I guess a few weeks ago, before I had led a different life, Iwouldn't had to be asked twice to play the game on anybody. But a mancan buy soda of me and be perfectly safe. Of course, if a man winks, when I ask him what flavor he wants, and says 'never mind, ' I knowenough to put in brandy. That is different. But I wouldn't smuggle itinto a man for nothing. This Christian Association Convention has causeda coldness between Pa and Ma though. "How's that? Your Pa isn't jealous, is he?" and the grocery man camearound from behind the counter to get the latest gossip to retail to thehired girls who traded with him. "Jealous nothin', " said the boy> as he took a few raisins out of a box. "You see, the delegates were shuffled out to all the church members totake care of, and they dealt two to Ma, and she never told Pa anythingabout it. They came to supper the first night, and Pa didn't get home, so when they went to the Convention in the evening Ma gave them a nightkey, and Pa came home from the boxing match about eleven o'clock, andMa was asleep. Just as Pa got most of his clothes off he heard somebodyfumbling at the front door, and he thought it was burglars. Pa has gotnerve enough, when he is on the inside of the house and the burglars areon the outside. He opened a window and looked out and saw two suspiciouslooking characters trying to pick the lock with a skeleton key, and hepicked up a new slop-jar that Ma had bought when we moved, cover andall, and dropped it down right between the two del-gates. Gosh, if ithad hit one of them there would have been the solemnest funeral you eversaw. Just as it struck they got the door opened and came in the hall, and the wind was blowing pretty hard and they thought a cyclonehad taken the cupola off the house. They were talking about beingmiraculously saved, and trying to strike a match on their wet pants, when Pa went to the head of the stairs and pushed over a wire standfilled with potted plants, which struck pretty near the delegates, andone of them said the house was coming down sure, and they better go intothe cellar, and they went down and got behind the furnace. Pa called meup and wanted me to go down cellar and tell the burglars we were ontothem, and for them to get out, but I wasn't very well, so Pa locked hisdoor and went to bed. I guess it must have been half an hour before Pa'scold feet woke Ma up, and then Pa told her not to move for her life, cause there were two of the savagest looking burglars that ever was, rumaging over the house. Ma smelled Pa's breath to see if he had gotto drinking again, and then she got up and hid her oraide watch in hershoes, and her Onalaska diamond ear-rings in the Bible, where she saidno burglar would ever find them, and Pa and Ma laid awake till daylight, and then Pa said he wasn't afraid, and he and Ma went down cellar. Pastood on the bottom stair and looked around, and one of the delegatessaid, 'Mister, is the storm over, and is your family safe?' and Marecognized the voice and said, 'Why, its one of the delegates. Whatare you doing down there?' and Pa said 'What's a delegate?' and then Maexplained it, and Pa apologized, and the delegate said it was no matter, as they had enjoyed themselves real well in the cellar. Ma was mortifiedmost to death, but the delegate told her it was all right. She was madat Pa, first, but when she saw the broken slop bowl on the front steps, and the potted plants in the hall, she wanted to kill Pa, and I guessshe would only for the society of the delegates. She couldn't helptelling Pa he was a bald headed old fool but Pa didn't retaliate--he istoo much of a gentleman to talk back in company. All he said was that awoman who is old enough to have delegates sawed off on to her ought tohave sense enough to tell her husband, and then they all driftedoff into conversation about the convention and the boxing match, andeverything was all right on the surface; but after breakfast, when thedelegates went to the convention, I noticed Pa went right down town andbought a new slop-jar and some more plants. Pa and Ma didn't speak allthe forenoon, and I guess they wouldn't up to this time only Ma's bonnetcame home from the milliner's and she had to have some money to payfor it. Then she called Pa 'pet, ' and that settled it. When Ma callsPa 'pet, ' that is twenty-five dollars. 'Dear, old darling, ' means fiftydollars. But, say, those christian young men do a heap of good, don'tthey. Their presence seems to make people better. Some boys down by thestore were going to tie a can on a dog's tail, yesterday, and somebodysaid 'here comes the Christian Association, ' and those bad boys let thedog go. They tried to find the dog after the crowd had got by, but thedog knew his business. Well, I must go down and charge the soda fountainfor a picnic that is expected from the country. " "Hold on a minute, " said the grocery man as he wound a piece of brownpaper around a cob and stuck it in a syrup jug he had just filled fora customer, and then licked his fingers. "I want to ask you a question. What has caused you to change so from being bad. You were about as badas they make 'em, up to a few weeks ago, and now you seem to have asoul, and get in your work doing good about as well as any boy in town. What is it that ails you?" "O, sugar, I don't want to tell, " said the boy, as he blushed andwiggled around on one foot, and looked silly; "but if you won't laugh, I will tell you. It is my girl that has made me good. It may be onlytemporary. If she goes back on me I may be tuff again; but if shecontinues to hold out faithful I shall be a daisy all the time. Say, didyou ever love a girl? It would do you good, if you loved anybody regularold fashioned the way I do, people could send little children here totrade, and you wouldn't palm off any wilted vegetables on to them, orgive them short weight--if you was in love, and felt that the one youloved saw every act of yours, and you could see her eyes every minute, you would throw away anything that was spoiled, and not try to sellit, for fear you would offend her. I don't think any man is fit to dobusiness honestly unless he is in love, or has been in love once. Now Icouldn't do anything wrong if I tried, because I should hear the stillsmall voice of my girl saying to me 'Hennery, let up on that. ' I slippedup on a banana peel, yesterday, and hurt myself, and I was just going tosay something offul, and I could see my girl's bangs raise right up, and there was a pained look in her face, and a tear in her eye, and, bygosh, I just smiled and looked tickled till her hair went down and thesmile came back again to her lips, though it hurt me like blazes where Istruck the sidewalk. Iwas telling Pa about it, and asked him if he everfelt as though his soul was going right out towards somebody, and hesaid he did once on a steamboat excursion; but he eat a lemon and gotover it. Pa thinks it is my liver, and wants me to take pills, but Itell you, boss, it has struck in me too deep for pills, unless it isone that weighs about a hundred and forty pounds, and wears a hat witha feather on. Say, if my girl should walk right into a burning lakeof red-hot lava, and beckon me to follow, I would take a hop, skip andjump, and--" "O give us a rest, " said the grocery man, a he took a basin of water andsprinkled the floor preparatory to sweeping out. "You have got the worstcase I ever saw, and you better go out and walk around a block, " and theboy went out, and forgot to hang out any sign. CHAPTER XV. HE TURNS SUPE. THE BAD BOY QUITS JERKING SODA--ENTERS THE DRAMATIC PROFESSION--"WHAT'S A SUPER"--THE PRIVILEGES OP A SUPE'S FATHER--BEHIND THE SCENES--THE BAD BOY HAS PLAYED WITH MC'CULLOUGH--"I WAS THE POPULACE"--PLAYS IT ON HIS SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER--"I PRITHEE, AU RESERVOIR, I GO HENS!" "You look pretty sleepy, " said the grocery man to the bad boy, as hecame in the store yawning, and stretched himself out on the counterwith his head on a piece of brown wrapping paper, in reach of a box ofraisins, "what's the matter? Been sitting up with your girl all night?" "Naw! I wish I had. Wakefullness with my girl is sweeter and morerestful than sleep. No, this is the result of being a dutiful son, and Iam tired. You see Pa and Ma have separated. That is, not for keeps, butPa has got frightened about burglars, and he gets up into the attic tosleep. He says it is to get fresh air, but he knows better. Ma has gotso accustomed to Pa's snoring that she can't go to sleep without it, and the first night Pa left she didn't sleep a wink, and yesterday I wasplaying on an old accordeon that I traded a dog collar for after our dogwas poisoned, and when I touched the low notes I noticed Ma dozed oft tosleep, it sounded so much like Pa's snore, and last night Ma made me setup and play for her to sleep. She rested splendid, but I am all brokeup, and I sold the accordeon this morning to the watchman who watchesour block, It is queer what a different effect music will have ondifferent people. While Ma was sleeping the sleep of innocence underthe influence of my counterfeit of Pa's snore, the night watchman wasbroke of his rest by it, and he bought it of me to give it to the son ofan enemy of his. Well, I have quit jerking soda. "No you don't tell me, " said the grocery man as he moved the box ofraisins out of reach. "You never will amount to anything unless youstick to one trade or profession. A rolling hen never catches the earlyangleworm. " "O, but I am all right now. In the soda water business, there is nochance for genius to rise unless the soda fountain explodes. It is allwind, and one gets tired of the constant fizz. He feels that he is afraud, and when he puts a little syrup in a tumbler, and fires a littlesweetened wind and water in it until the soap suds fills the tumbler, and charges ten cents for that which only costs a cent, a sensitive sodajerker, who has reformed, feels that it is worse than three card monte. I couldn't stand the wear on my conscience, so I have got a permanentjob as a super, and shall open the 1st of September. "Say, what's a super? It isn't one of these free lunch places, that themayor closes at midnight, is it?" and the grocery man looked sorry. "O, thunder, you want salt on you. A super is an adjunct to the stage. Asupe is a fellow that assists the stars and things, carrying chairs andtaking up carpets, and sweeping the sand off the stage after a dancerhas danced a jig, and he brings beer for the actors, and helps laceup corsets, and anything he can do to add to the effect of the play. Privately, now, I have been acting as a supe for a long time, on thesly, and my folks didn't know anything about it, but since I reformedand decided to be good, I felt it my duty to tell Ma and Pa about it. The news broke Ma all up, at first, but Pa said some of the best actorsin this country were supes once, and some of them were now, and hethought suping would be the making of me. Ma thought going on the stagewould be my ruination. She said the theater was the hotbed of sin, andbrought more ruin than the church could head off. But when I told herthat they always gave a supe two or three extra tickets for his family, she said the theatre had some redeeming features, and when I said myentrance upon the stage would give me a splendid opportunity to get therecipe for face powder from the actresses, for Ma, and I could find outhow the actresses managed to get number four feet into number one shoes, Ma said she wished I would commence suping right off. Ma says there aresome things about the theater that are not so alfired bad, and she wantsme to get seats for the first comic opera that comes along. Pa wantsit understood with the manager that a supe's father has a right to gobehind the scenes to see that no harm befalls him, but I know what Pawants. He may seem pious, and all that, but he likes to look at balletgirls better than any meek and lowly follower I ever see, and some dayyou will hear music in the air. Pa thinks theaters are very bad, whenhe has to pay a dollar for a reserved seat, but when he can get in fornothing as a relative of one of the 'perfesh', the theater has manyredeeming qualities. Pa and Ma think I am going into the business freshand green, but I know all about it. When I played with McCullough hereonce-- "Oh, what are you giving us, " said the grocery man in disgust, "when youplayed with McCullough! What did you do!" "What did I do? Why, you old seed cucumber, the whole play centeredaround me. Do you remember the scene in the Roman forum, whereMcCullough addressed the populace of Rome? I was the populace. Don't youremember a small feller standing in front of the Roman orator takingit in; with a night shirt on, with bare legs and arms? That was me, and everything depended on me. Suppose I had gone off the stage at thecritical moment, or laughed when I should have looked fierce at theinspired words of the Roman senator, it would have been a dead give awayon McCollough. As the populace of Rome I consider myself a glitteringsuccess, and Mc took me by the hand when they carried Cæsar's deadbody out, and he said, 'us three did ourselves proud. ' Such praisefrom McCollough is seldom accorded to a supe. But I don't consider thepopulace of the imperial city of Rome my master piece. Where I excelis in coming out before the curtain between the acts, and unhooking thecarpet. Some supes go out and turn their backs to the audience, showingpatches on their pants, and rip up the carpet with no style about them, and the dust flies, and the boys yell 'supe, ' and the supe gets nervousand forgets his cue, and goes off tumbling over the carpet, and theorchestra leader is afraid the supe will fall on him. But I go out witha quiet dignity that is only gained by experience, and I take hold ofthe carpet the way Hamlet takes up the skull of Yorick, and the audienceis paralized. I kneel down on the carpet, to unhook it, in a devotionalsort of a way that makes the audience bow their heads as though theywere in church, and before they realize that I am only a supe I have thecarpet unhooked and march out the way a 'Piscopal minister does whenhe goes out between the acts at church to change his shirt. They never'guy' me, cause I act well my part. But I kick on holding dogs foractresses. Some supes think they are made if they can hold a dog, butI have an ambition that a pug dog will not fill. I held Mary Anderson'scud of gum once, while she went on the stage, and when she came off andtook her gum her fingers touched mine and I had to run my fingers inmy hair to warm them, like a fellow does when he has been snow-balling. Gosh, but she would freeze ice cream without salt. I shall be glad whenthe theatrical season opens, 'cause we actors get tired laying off. "Well, I'd like to go behind the scenes with you some night, " said thegrocery man, offering the bad boy an orange to get solid with him, inview of future complimentary tickets. "No danger, is there?" "No danger if you keep off the grass. But you'd a dide to see my SundaySchool teacher one Saturday night last summer. He keeps books in astore, and is pretty soon week days, but he can tell you more aboutDaniel in the lion's den on Sunday than anybody. He knew I was solid atthe theater, and wanted me to get him behind the scenes one night, and another supe wanted to go to the sparring match, and I thought itwouldn't be any harm to work my teacher in, so I got him a job thatnight to hold the dogs for the Uncle Tom's show. He was in one of thewings holding the chains, and the dogs were just anxious to go on, andit was all my teacher could do to hold them. I told him to wind thechains around his wrists, and he did so, and just then Eliza began toskip across the ice, and we sicked the blood hounds on before my teachercould unwind the chains from his wrists, and the dogs pulled him rightout on the stage, on his stomach, and drawed him across, and he jerkedone dog and kicked him in the stomach, and the dog turned on my teacherand took a mouthful of his coat tail and shook it, and I guess the doggot some meat, anyway the teacher climbed up a step ladder, and the dogstreed him, and the step ladder fell down, and we grabbed the dogsand put some court plaster on the teacher's nose, where the fireextinguisher peeled it, and he said he would go home, cause the theaterwas demoralizing in its tendencies. " [Illustration: The Sunday School Teachers first appearance on stage 140] "I spose it was not right, but when the teacher stood up to hear ourSunday School lesson the next day, cause he was tired where the dog bithim, I said 'sick-em, ' in a whisper, when his back was turned, and hejumped clear over to the Bible class, and put his hands around to hiscoat tail as though he thought the Uncle Tom's Cabin party were givinga matinee in the church. The Sunday school lesson was about the dog'slicking the sores of Lazarus, and the teacher said we must not confoundthe good dogs of Bible time with the savage beasts of the present day, that would shake the daylights out of Lazarus and make him climb thecedars of Lebanon quicker than you could say Jack Robinson, and go offchewing the cud of bitter reflection on Lazarus' coat tail. I don'tthink a Sunday school teacher ought to bring up personal reminiscencesbefore a class of children, do you? Well, some time next fall you puton a clean shirt and a pair of sheet iron pants, with stove legs on theinside, and I will take you behind the scenes to see some good moralshow. In the meantime, if you have occasion to talk with Pa, tell himthat Booth, and Barrett, and Keene commenced on the stage as supes, andSalvini roasted peanuts in the lobby of some theater. I want our folksto feel that I am taking the right course to become a star. I prythee_au reservoir_. I go hens! but to return. Avaunt!" And the bad boywalked out on his toes _a la_ Booth. CHAPTER XVI. UNCLE EZRA PAYS A VISIT--UNCLE EZRA CAUSES THE BAD BOY TO BACKSLIDE--UNCLE EZRA AND THE OLD MAN WERE BAD PILLS--THEIR RECORD IS AWFUL--KEEPING UNCLE EZRA ON THE RAGGED EDGE--THE BED SLATS FIXED--THE OLD MAN TANGLED UP--THIS WORLD IS NOT RUN RIGHT--UNCLE EZRA MAKES HIM TIRED. "I hear your Uncle Ezra is here on a visit, " said the grocery man tothe bad boy. "I suppose you have been having a high old time. There isnothing that does a boy more good than to have a nice visit with a gooduncle, and hear him tell about old times when he and the boy's fatherwere boys together. " "Well, I don't know about it, " said the boy, as he took a stick ofmaccaroni, and began to blow paper wads through it at a wood sawyer, whowas filing a saw outside the door. "When a boy who has been tough hasgot his pins all set to reform, I don't think it does him any good tohave a real nice Uncle come to the house visiting. Anyway, that's myexperience. I have backslid the worst way, and it is going to take mea month after Uncle Ezra goes away to climb up to the grace that I havefallen from. It is darn discouraging, " said the boy as he looked up tothe ceiling in an innocent sort of a way, and hid the macarroni underhis coat when the wood sawyer, who had been hit in the neck, dropped hissaw and got up mad. "What's the trouble? Your uncle has the reputation where he lives, ofbeing one of the pillars of society. But you can't tell about thesefellows when they get away from home. Does he drink?" "'No, he don't drink; but as near as I can figure it, he and Pa wereabout the worst pills in the box, when they were young. I don't wan'tyou to repeat it, but when Pa and Ma were married they eloped. Yes, sir--actually ran away, and defied their parents--and they had to hideabout a week, for fear Ma's father would fill Pa so full of cold leadthat he would sink if he fell in the water. Pa has been kicked over thefence, and chased down alleys dozens of times by Ma's grandfather, whenhe was sparking Ma; and Ma was a terror too, 'cause her mother couldn'tdo anything with her, though she is awful precise now, and wantseverybody to be too good. Why, Ma's mother used to warm her ears, andshake the daylights out of her, but it didn't do any good. She wasmashed on Pa, and there was no cure for her except to have Pa prescribedfor her as a husband, and they ran away. Uncle Ezra told me all aboutit. Ma hain't got any patience with girls now days that have minds oftheir own about fellows, and she thinks their parents ought to have allthe say. Well, maybe she thinks she knows all about it. But when peopleget in love it is the same now as when Pa and Ma were trying to keep outof the reach of my grandfather's shot gun. But Pa and Uncle Ezra and Maare good friends, and they talk over old times and have a big laugh. I guess Uncle Ezra was too much for Pa in joking when they were boys, 'cause Pa told me that all rules against joking were suspended whileUncle Ezra was here, and for me to play any thing on him I could. I toldPa I was trying to lead a different life, but he said what I wanted todo was to make Uncle Ezra think of old times, and the only way was tokeep him on the ragged edge. I thought if there was anything I could doto make it pleasant for my Uncle, it was my duty to do it, so I fixedthe bed slats on the spare bed so they would fall down at 2 A. M. Thefirst night, and then I retired. At two o'clock I heard the awfulestnoise in the spare room, and a howling and screaming, and I went downto meet Uncle Ezra in the hall, and he asked me what was the matter inthere, and I asked him if he didn't sleep in the spare room, and he saidno, that Pa and Ma was in there, and he slept in their room. Then wewent in the spare room and you'd a dide to see Pa. " [Illustration: Pa was all tied up 146] "Ma had jumped out when the slats first fell, and was putting her hairup in curl papers when we got in, but Pa was all tangled up in thesprings and things. His head had gone down first, and the mattrass andquilts rolled over him, and he was almost smothered, and we had to takethe bedsted down to get him out, the way you have to unharness a horsewhen he runs away and falls down, before you can get him up. Pa was mad, but Uncle Ezra laughed at him, and told him he was only foundered, andall he wanted was a bran mash and some horse liniment and he would comeout all right. Uncle Ezra went out in to the hall to get a pail of waterto throw on Pa, 'cause he said Pa was afire, when Pa asks me why inblazes I didn't fix the other bed slats, and I told him I didn't knowas they were going to change beds, and then Pa said don't let it occuragain. Pa lays everything to me. He is the most changeable man I eversaw. He told me to do everything Uncle Ezra wanted me to do, and then, when I helped Uncle Ezra to play a joke on Pa, he was mad. Say, I don'tthink this world is run right, do you? I haven't got much time to talkto you to-day, cause Uncle Ezra and me are going fishing but don't itstrike you that it is queer that parents trounce boys for doing justwhat they did themselves. Now, I have got a friend whose father isa lawyer. That lawyer would warm his boy if he should tell a lie, orassociate with anybody that was bad, and yet the lawyer will defend aman he knows is guilty of stealing, and get him clear and take the moneyhe got from the thief, who stole it, to buy the same boy a new coat towear to church, and he will defend a man who committed murder, and makean argument to the jury that will bring tears to their eyes, and theywill clear the murderer. Queer, ain't it? And say, how is it that wesend missionaries to Burmah, to convert them from heathenism, and thesame vessel that takes the missionaries there carries from Boston acargo of tin gods to sell to the heathen? Why wouldn't it be better tosend the missionaries to Boston? I think the more a boy learns the morehe gets mixed. " "Well, how's your theater? Have any of the great actorssupported you lately?" said the grocery man, to change the subject. "No, we are all off on vacations. Booth and Barrett, and lots of thestars, are gone to Europe, and the rest work down to less high-tonedplaces. Some of the theater girls are waiters at summer resorts, andlots are visiting relatives on farms. I tell you, it makes a differencewhether the relatives are visiting you or you are visiting them. Actorsand actresses feels awfully when an old granger comes to the townwhere they are playing, and wants to see them. They are ashamed of hishomespun clothes, and cowhide boots, and they want to meet him in analley somewhere, or in the basement of the theater, so the other actorswill not laugh at their rough relatives, but when the season is over, an actor who can remember a relative out on a farm, is tickled to death, and the granger is all right enough there, and the actor does not thinkof the rough, nutmeg grater hands, and the blistered nose, as long asthe granger relative will put up fried pork and things, and 'support'the actor. My Uncle Ezra is pretty rough and it makes me tired sometimeswhen I am down town with him to have him go into a store where there aregirl clerks and ask what things are for, that I know he don't want, andmake the girls blush, but he is a good hearted old man, and he andme are going to make a mint of money during vacation. He lives near asummer resort hotel, and has a stream that is full of minnows, and weare going to catch minnows and sell them to the dudes for fish bait. Hesays some of the fools will pay ten cents apiece for minnows, so if wesell a million minnows, we make a fortune. I am coming back in Septemberand will buy out your grocery. Say, let me have a pound of raisins, andI'll pay you when I sell my uncle's minnows. " CHAPTER XVII. HE DISCUSSES THEOLOGY. MEDITATIONS ON NOAH'S ARK--THE GARDEN OF EDEN--THE ANCIENT DUDE--ADAM WITH A PLUG HAT ON--"I'M A THINKER PROM THINKERSVILLE"--THE APOSTLES IN A PATROL WAGON-- ELIJAH AND ELISHA--THE PRODIGAL SON--A VEAL POT PIE FOR DINNER. "What you sitting there for half an hour for, staring at vacancy?" saidthe grocery man to the bad boy, as he sat on a stool by the stove oneof these foggy mornings, when everybody feels like quarreling, withhis fingers clasped around his knee, looking as though he did not knowenough to last him to bed. "What you thinking about anyway?" "I was wondering where you would have been today if Noah had run his arkinto such a fog as this, and there had been no fog-horn on Mount Ararat, and he had passed by with his excursion and not made a landing, and hadfloated around on the freshet until all the animals starved, and the arkhad struck a snag and burst a hole in their bottom. I tell you, we canall congratulate ourselves that Noah happened to blunder on that highground. If that ark had been lost, either by being foundered, or beingblowed up by Fenians because Noah was an Englishman, it would have beencold work trying to populate this world. In that case another Adam andEve would have to be made out of dirt and water, and they might havegone wrong again and failed to raise a family, and where would we havebeen? I tell you, when I think of the narrow escapes we have had, it isa wonder to me that we have got along as well as we have. " "Well, when did you get out of the asylum?" said the grocery man, whohad been standing back with his mouth open looking at the boy as thoughhe was crazy. "What you want is to have your head soaked. You aregetting so you reach out too far with that small mind of yours. In aboutanother year you will want to run this world yourself. I don't think youare reforming very much. It is wicked for a boy your size to argue aboutsuch things. Your folks better send you to college. " "What do I want to go to college for, and be a heartless hazer, and apoor base ball player. I can be bad enough at home. The more I read, themore I think. I don't believe I can ever be good enough to go to heaven, anyway, and I guess I will go into the newspaper business, where theydon't have to be good, and where they have passes everywhere. Do youknow, I think when I was built they left out a cog wheel or something inmy head. I can't think like some boys. I get to thinking about Adam andEve in the Garden of Eden, and of the Dude with the cloven hoof thatflirted with Eve, and treated her and Adam to the dried apples, and Ican't think of them as some boys do, with a fig leaf polonaise, and figleaf vests. I imagine them dressed up in the latest style. I know it iswrong, but that it what a poor boy has to suffer who has an imagination, and where did I get the imagination? This confounded imagination of mineshows me Adam with a plug hat on, just like our minister wears, anda stand up collar, and tight pants, and peaked-toed shoes, and Eve ispictured to me with a crushed-angleworm colored dress, and brown stripedstockings, and newspapers in her dress to make it stick out, and a hatwith dandelions on, and a red parasol, and a lace handkerchief, whichshe puts to her lips and winks with her left eye to the masher who isstanding by the corner of the house, in an attitude, while the tail withthe dart on the end is wound around the rain water barrel, so Eve won'tsee it and get scared. Say, don't you think it is better for a boy tothink of our first parents with clothes on, than to think of them almostnaked, exposed to the inclemency of the weather, with nothing but figleaves pinned on? I want to do right, as near as I can, but I had ratherthink of them dressed like our folks are to-day, than to think of themin a cyclone with leaves for wearing apparel. Say, it is wrong to fight, but don't you think if Adam had put on a pair of boxing gloves, when hefound the devil was getting too fresh about the place, and knocked himout in a couple of rounds, and pasted him in the nose, and fired himout of the summer garden, that it would have been a big thing for thisworld. Now, honest?" "Lookahere, " said the grocery man, who had been looking at the boy indismay, "You better go right home, and let your Ma fix up some warmdrink for you, and put you to bed. You are all wrong in the head, and ifyou are not attended to you will have brain fever. I tell you, boy, youare in danger. Come I will go home with you. " "O, danger, nothin'. I am just telling how things look to a boy who hasnot got the facilities for being too good in his youth. Some boys cantake things as they read them, and not think any for themselves, butI am a Thinker from Thinkerville, and my imagination plays the dickenswith me. There is nothing I read about old times but what I compare itwith the same line of business at the present day. Now, when I think ofthe fishermen of Galilee, drawing their seines, I wonder what they wouldhave done if there had been a law against hauling seines, as there isin Wisconsin to-day, and I can see a constable with a warrant for thearrest of the Galilee fishermen, snatching the old apostles and takingthem to the police station in a patrol wagon. I know it is wrong tothink like that, but how can I help it? Say, suppose those fishermen hadbeen out hauling their seines, and our minister should come along withhis good clothes on, his jointed rod, his nickle-plated reel, and hissilk fish line, and his patent fish hook, and put a frog on the hookand cast his line near the Galilee fish-man and go to trolling for bass?What do you suppose the lone fisherman of the Bible times would havethought about the gall of the jointed rod fisherman? Do you suppose theywould have thrown stones in the water where he was trolling, or wouldthey have told him there was good trolling around a point about half amile up the shore, where they knew he wouldn't get a bite in a week, theway a fellow of Muskego lake lied to our minister a spell ago? I tellyou, boss, it is a sad thing for a boy to have an imagination, " and theboy put his other knee in the sling made by the clenched fingers of bothhands, and waited for the grocery man to argue with him. "I wish you would go away from here. I am afraid of you, " said thegrocery man. "I would give anything if you Pa or the minister would comein and have a talk with you. Your mind is wandering, " and the groceryman went to the door and looked up and down street to see if somebodywouldn't come in and watch the crazy boy, while he went to breakfast. "O, Pa and the minister can't make a first payment on me. Pa gets madwhen I ask questions, and the minister thinks I am past redemption. Pasaid yesterday that baldness was caused, in every case, by men's wearingplug hats, and when I asked him where the good Elisha, (whom the boyscalled 'go up old bald head, ' and the bears had a free lunch on them, )got his plug hat, Pa said school was dismissed and I could go. Whenthe minister was telling me about the good Elijah going up through theclouds in a chariot of fire, and I asked the minister what he thoughtElijah would have thought if he had met our Sunday school superintendentcoming down through the clouds on a bicycle, he put his hand on my headand said my liver was all wrong. Now, I will leave it to you if therewas anything wrong about that. Say, do you know what I think is the mostbeautiful thing in the Bible?" "No I don't, " said the grocery man, "and if you wan't to tell it I willlisten just five minutes, and then I am going to shut up the store andgo to breakfast. You make me tired. " "Well, I think the finest thing is that story about the prodigal son, where the boy took all the money he could scrape up and went out Westto paint the towns red. He spent his money in riotous living, and saweverything that was going on, and got full of benzine, and struck allthe gangs of toughs, both male and female, and his stomach went backon him, and he had malaria, and finally he got to be a cow-boy, herdinghogs, and had to eat husks that the hogs didn't want, and got pretty lowdown. Then he thought it was a pretty good scheme to be getting aroundhome, where they had three meals a day, and spring mattresses; and hestarted home, beating his way on the trains, and he didn't know whetherthe old man would receive him with open arms or pointed boots; but theold man came down to the depot to meet him, and right there before thepassengers, and the conductor and brakemen, he wasn't ashamed of hisboy, though he was ragged, and looked as though he had been on the warpath; and the old man fell on his neck and wept, and took him home in ahack, and had veal pot pie for dinner. That's what I call sense. A goodmany men now days would have put the police on the tramp and had himordered out of town. What, you going to close up the store? Well, I willsee you later. I want to talk with you about something that is weighingon my mind, " and the boy got out just in time to save his coat tailfrom being caught in the door, and when the grocery man came back frombreakfast he found a sign in front:-- THIS STORE IS CLOSED TILL FURTHER NOTICE. SHERIFF. CHAPTER XVIII. THE DEPARTED ROOSTER--THE GROCERY MAN DISCOURSES ON DEATH-- THE DEAD ROOSTER--A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH--THE TENDERNESS BETWEEN THE ROOSTER AND HIS FAITHFUL HEN--THE HEN RETIRES TO SET--THE CHICKENS!--THE PROUD ROOSTER DIES--THE FICKLE HEN FLIRTING IN INDECENT HASTE. "Why don't you take an ice pick and clean the dirt out from under yourfinger nails?" said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in thestore and stroked the cat the wrong way as she lay in the sun on thecounter, on a quire of manilla paper. "Can't remove the dirt for thirty days--it is an emblem of mourning. Hada funeral at our house, yesterday;" and the boy took a pickle out of atub and put it in the cat's mouth, and shut her teeth together on it, and then went to the show case, while the grocery man whose back hadbeen turned during the pickle exercise, thought by the way the catjumped into the dried apple barrel, and began to paw and scratch withall four of her feet, and yowl, that she was going to have a fit. "I hadn't heard about it, " said the grocery man, as he took the cat bythe neck and tossed her out in the back shed into an old oyster box fullof sawdust, with a parting injunction that if she was going to have fitsshe better go out where there was plenty of fresh air. "Death is alwaysa sad thing to contemplate. One day we are full of health, and joy, andcold victuals, and the next we are screwed down in a box, a few wordsare said over our remains, a few tears are shed, and there is a race tosee who shall get back from the cemetery first; and though we may thinkwe are an important factor in the world's progress, and sometimes feelas though it would be unable to put up margins and have to stop thedeal, the world goes right along, and it must annoy people who die torealize that they don't count for game. The greatest man in the world isonly a nine spot when he is dead, because somebody else takes the tricksthe dead man ought to have taken. But, say, who is dead at your house?" "Our rooster! Take care, don't you hit me with that canvassed ham!" saidthe boy as the grocery man looked mad to learn that there was nobodydead but a rooster, when he had preached such a sermon on the subject. "Yes, how soon we are forgotten when we are gone. Now, you would havethought that rooster's hen would have remained faithful to him for aweek at least. I have watched them all the spring, and I never saw amore perfect picture of devotion than that between the bantam roosterand his hen. They were constantly together, and there was nothing toogood for her. He would dig up angle worms and call her, and when shecame up on a gallop and saw the great big worm on the ground, she wouldlook so proud of her rooster, and he would straighten up and look asthough he was saying to her, 'I'm a daisy, ' and then she would look athim as if she would like to bite him, and just as she was going to pickup the worm he would snatch it and swallow it himself, and chuckle andwalk around and be full of business, as though wondering why she didn'ttake the worm after he had dug it for her, and then the hen would lookdisappointed at first and then she would look resigned, as much as tosay, 'Worms are too rich for my blood anyway, and the poor dear roosterneeds them more than I do, because he has to do all the crowing, ' andshe would go off and find a grasshopper and eat it on the sly for fearhe would see her and complain because she didn't divide. O, I have neverseen anything that seemed to me so human as the relations between thatrooster and hen. He seemed to try to do everything for her. He wouldmake her stop cackling when she laid an egg, and he would try to cackle, and crow over it as though he had laid it, and she would get off in acorner and cluck in a modest, retiring manner, as though she wished toconvey the idea to the servant girls in the kitchen that the rooster hadto do all the hard work, and she was only a useless appendage, fit onlyfor society and company for him. But I was disgusted with him when thepoor hen was setting. The first week that she sat on the eggs he seemedto get along first rate, because he had a couple of flower beds to digup, which a press of business had caused him to neglect before, and acouple of neighbors' gardens to destroy, so he seemed to be glad to havehis hen retire to her boudoir and set, but after he had been shooed outof the gardens and flower beds he seemed to be nervous, and evidentlywanted to be petted, and he would go near the hen and she would seem totell him to go and take a walk around the block, because she hadn't timeto leave her business, and if she didn't attend to it they would have alot of spoiled eggs on their hand, and no family to bring up. He wouldscold, and seem to tell her that it was all foolishness, that for hispart he didn't want to hear a lot of chickens squawking around. Hewould seem to argue with her that a brood of chickens would be a deadgive-away on them both, and they would be at once classed as old folks, while if they were alone in the world they would be spring chickens, andcould go in young society, but the hen would scold back, and tell himhe ought to be ashamed of himself to talk that way, and he would go offmad, and sulk around a spell, and then go to a neighbor's hen-houseand sometimes he wouldn't come back till the next day. The hen would besorry she had spoken so cross, and would seem pained at his going awayand would look anxiously for his return, and when he came back afterbeing out in the rain all night, she would be solicitious after hishealth, and tell him he ought to wrap something around him, but he actedas though he didn't care for his health, and he would go out againand get chilled through. Finally the hen come off the nest with tenchickens, and the rooster seemed very proud, and when anybody came outto have a look at them he would crow, and seemed to say they were allhis chickens, though the hen was a long time hatching them, and if ithad been him that was setting on them he could have hatched them out ina week, or died a trying. But the exposure told on him, and he went intoa decline, and one morning we found him dead. Do you know, I never seea hen that seemed to realize a calamity as she did. She looked pale, and her eyes looked red, and she seemed to be utterly crushed. If thechickens, which were so young they could not realize that they werelittle orphans, became noisy, and got to pulling and hauling over aworm, and conducted themselves in an unseemly manner, she would talk tothem in hen language, with tears in her eyes, and it was a picture ofwoe. But the next day a neighboring rooster got to looking through thefence from the alley, and trying to flirt with her. At first she wasindignant, and seemed to tell him he ought to go about his business, andleave her alone, but the dude kept clucking, and pretty soon the widowedhen edged up towards the fence, and asked him to come in, but the holein the fence was too small for him, and then the chickens went out inthe alley, and the hen followed them out. I shall always think she toldthe chickens to go out, so she would have an excuse to go after them, and flirt with the rooster, and I think it is a perfect shame. She isout in the alley half the time, and I could cuff her. It seems to mewrong to so soon forget a deceased rooster, but I suppose a hen can't beany more than human. Say, you don't want to buy a good dead roosterdo you? You could pick it and sell it to somebody that owes you, for aspring chicken. " "No, I don't want any deceased poultry, that died of grief, and youbetter go home and watch your hen, or you will be bereaved some more, "and the grocery man went out in the shed to see if the cat was overits fit, and when he came back the boy was gone, and after a while thegrocery man saw a crowd in front of the store and he went out and foundthe dead rooster lying on the vegetable stand, with a paper pinned onits breast on which was a sign:-- THIS RUSTER DIDE OF COLIX. FOR SALE CHEAP TO BOARDING HOUSE ONLY. He took the dead rooster and threw it out in the street, and lookedup and down the street for the bad boy, and went in and hid a raw hidewhere he could reach it handy. CHAPTER XIX. ONE MORE JOKE ON THE OLD MAN. UNCLE EZRA RETURNS--THE BASKET ON THE STEPS--THE ANONYMOUS LETTER--"O BROTHER THAT I SHOULD LIVE TO SEE THIS DAY!"--AN UGLY DUTCH BABY--THE OLD MAN WHEELS THE BABY NOW--A FROG IN THE OLD MAN'S BED. "I see your Pa wheeling the baby around a good deal lately, " said thegrocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the store one evening to buy astick of striped pepperment candy for the baby, while his Pa stoppedthe baby wagon out on the sidewalk and waited for the boy, with anexpression of resignation on his face. "What's got into your Pa to be nurse girl this hot weather?" "O, we have had a circus at our house, " said the boy, as he came inafter putting the candy in the baby's hand. "You see, Uncle Ezra cameback from Chicago, where he had been to sell some cheese, and he stoppedover a couple of days with us, and he said we must play one more jokeon Pa before he went home. We played it, and it is a wonder I am alive, because I never saw Pa so mad in all my life. Now this is the last timeI go into any joke on shares. If I play any more jokes I don't want anyold Uncle to give me away. " "What is it?" said the grocery man, as he took a stool and sat outby the front door beside the boy who was trying to eat a box of redraspberries on the sly. "Well Uncle Ezra and me bribed the nurse girl to dress the baby up oneevening in some old, dirty baby clothes, belonging to our wash woman'sbaby, and we put it in a basket and placed the basket on the front doorstep, and put a note in the basket and addressed it to Pa. We hadthe nurse girl stay out in front, by the basement stairs, so the babycouldn't get away and she rung the bell and got behind something. Ma andPa, and Uncle Ezra and me were in the back parlor when the bell rung, and Ma told me to go to the door, and I brought in the basket, and setit down, and told Pa there was a note in it for him. Ma, she came upand looked at the note as Pa tore it open, and Uncle Ezra looked in thebasket and sighed. Pa read part of the note and stopped and turned pale, and sat down then Ma read some of it, and she didn't feel very well, and she leaned against the piano and grated her teeth. The note was in agirl's hand writing, and was like this: "Old Bald Headed Pet:-- "You will have to take care of your child, because I cannot. Bring it up tenderly, and don't, for heaven's sake, send it to the Foundling Asylum. I shall go drown myself. "Your loving, "Almira. " "What did your Ma say?" said the grocery man, becoming interested. "O, Ma played her part well. Uncle Ezra had told her the joke, and shesaid 'retch, ' to Pa, just as the actresses do on the stage, and put herhandkerchief to her eyes. Pa said it was 'false, ' and Uncle Ezra said, 'O, brother, that I should live to see this day, ' and I said, as Ilooked in the basket, 'Pa, it looks just like you, and I'll leave it toMa. ' That was too much, and Pa got mad in a minute. He always gets madat me. But he went up and looked in the basket, and he said it was someDutch baby, and was evidently from the lower strata of society, and theunnatural mother wanted to get rid of it, and he said he didn't know any'Almira' at all. When he called it a dutch baby, and called attention toits irregular features, that made Ma mad, and she took it up out of thebasket and told Pa it was a perfect picture of him, and tried to put itin Pa's arms, but he wouldn't have it, and said he would call the policeand have it taken to the poor house. Uncle Ezra took Pa in a cornerand told him the best thing he could do would be to see 'Almira' andcompromise with her, and that made Pa mad, and he was going to hit uncleEzra with a chair. Pa was perfectly wild, and if he had a gun I guess hewould have shot all of us. Ma took the baby up stairs and had the girlput it to bed, and after Pa got mad enough Uncle Ezra told him it wasall a joke, and it was his own baby, that we had put in the basket, andthen he was madder than ever, and he told Uncle Ezra never to darken hisdoor again. I don't how know he made up with Ma for calling it a dutchbaby from the Polack settlement, but anyway, he wheels it around everyday, and Ma and Pa have got so they speak again. " "That was a mighty mean trick, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Where do you expect to fetch up when you die?" said the grocery man. "I told Uncle Ezra it was a mean trick, " said the boy, "but he said thatwasn't a priming to some of the tricks Pa had played on him years ago. He says Pa used to play tricks on everybody. I may be mean, but I neverplayed wicked jokes on blind people as Pa did when he was a boy. UncleEzra says once there was a party of four blind vocalists, all girls, gave an entertainment at the town where Pa lived, and they stayed at thehotel where Pa tended bar. Another thing I never sold rum, either, asPa did. Well, before the blind vocalists went to bed Pa caught a lot offrogs and put them in the beds where the girls were to sleep, and whenthe poor blind girls got into bed the frogs hopped over them, and theway they got out was a caution. It is bad enough to have frogs hoppingall over girls that can see, but for girls that are deprived of theirsight, and don't know what anything is, except by the feeling of it, itlooks to me like a pretty tough joke. I guess Pa is sorry now for whathe did, 'cause when Uncle Ezra told the frog story, I brought home afrog and put it in Pa's bad. Pa has been afraid of paralysis for years, and when his leg, or anything gets asleep, he thinks that is the end ofhim. Before bedtime I turned the conversation onto paralysis, andtold about a man about Pa's age having it on the West side, and Pawas nervous, and soon after he retired I guess the frog wanted to getacquainted with Pa, 'cause he yelled six kinds of murder, and we wentinto his room. You know how cold a frog is? Well, you'd a dide to seePa. He laid still, and said his end had come, and Uncle Ezra askedhim if it was the end with the head on, or the feet, and Pa told himparalysis had marked him for a victim, and he could feel that his leftleg was becoming dead. He said he could feel the cold, clammy hand ofdeath walking up him, and he wanted Ma to put a bottle of hot water tohis feet. Ma got the bottle of hot water and put it to Pa's feet, andthe cork came out and Pa said he was dead, sure enough, now, because hewas hot in the extremities, and that a cold wave was going up his leg. Ma asked him where the cold wave was, and he told her, and she thoughtshe would rub it, but she began to yell the same kind of murder Pa did, and she said a snake had gone up her sleeve. Then I thought it was timeto stop the circus, and I reached up Ma's lace sleeve and caught thefrog by the leg and pulled it out, and told Pa I guessed he had taken myfrog to bed with him, and I showed it to him, and then he said I did it, and he would maul me so I could not get up alone, and he said that a boythat would do such a thing would go to hell as sure as preachin' andI asked him if he thought a man who put frogs in the beds with blindgirls, when he was a boy, would get to heaven, and then he told me tolite out, and I lit. I guess Pa will feel better when Uncle Ezra goesaway, cause he thinks Uncle Ezra talks too much about old times. Well, here comes our baby wagon, and I guess Pa has done penance long enough, and I will go and wheel the kid awhile. Say, you call Pa in, after Itake the baby wagon, and tell him you don't know how he would get alongwithout such a nice boy as me, and you can charge it in our next months'bill. " CHAPTER XX. FOURTH OF JULY MISADVENTURES--TROUBLE IN THE PISTOL POCKET-- THE GROCERY MAN'S CAT--THE BAD BOY A MINISTERING ANGEL-- ASLEEP ON THE FOURTH OF JULY--GOES WITH HIS GIRL TO THE SOLDIER'S HOME--TERRIBLE FOURTH. OF JULY MISADVENTURES--THE GIRL WHO WENT OUT COMES BACK A BURNT OFFERING. "Here, condemn you, you will pay for that cat, " said the grocery man tothe bad boy, as he came in the store all broke up, the morning after the4th of July. "What cat?" said the boy as he leaned against the zinc ice box to coolhis back, which had been having trouble with a bunch of fire crackers inhis pistol pocket. "We haven't ordered any cat from here. Who ordered anycat sent to our house? We get our sausage at the market, " and the boyrubbed some cold cream on his nose and eyebrows where the skin was off. "Yes, that is all right enough, " said the grocery man, "but somebodywho knew where that cat slept, in the box of sawdust, back of the store, filled it full of firecrackers, Wednesday forenoon, when I was out tosee the procession, and never notified the cat, and touched them off, and the cat went through the roof of the shed, and she hasn't gothair enough left on her to put in tea. Now, you didn't show up all theforenoon, and I went and asked your Ma where you was, and she said youhad been sitting up four nights straight along with a sick boy in theThird Ward, and you was sleeping all the forenoon the 4th of July. Ifthat is so, that lets you out on the cat, but it don't stand to reason. Own up, now, was you asleep all the forenoon, the 4th, while other boyswere celebrating, or did you scorch my cat?" and the grocery man lookedat the boy as though he would believe every word he said, if he _was_bad. "Well, said the bad boy as he yawned as though he had been up all night, "I am innocent of sitting up with your cat, but I plead guiltyto sitting up with Duffy. You see, I am bad, and it don't make anydifference where I am, and Duffy thumped me once when we were playingmarbles, and I said I would get even with him some time. His Ma washesfor us, and when she told me that her boy was sick with fever, and hadnobody to stay with him while she was away, I thought it would be a goodway to get even with Duffy, when he was weak, and I went down there tohis shanty and gave him his medicine, and read to him all day, and hecried 'cause he knew I ought to have mauled him, and that night I sat upwith him while his Ma did the ironing, and Duffy was so glad that I wentdown every day and stayed there every night, and fired medicine downhim, and let his Ma sleep, and Duffy has got mashed on me, and he says Iwill be an angel when I die. Last night makes five nights I have sat upwith him, and he has got so he can eat beef tea and crackers. My girlwent back on me 'cause she said I was sitting up with some other girl. She said that Duffy story was too thin, but Duffy's Ma was washing atmy girl's house and she proved what I said, and I was all right again. I slept all the forenoon the 4th, and then stayed with Duffy till 4o'clock, and got a furlough and took my girl to the Soldiers' Home. Ihad rather set up with Duffy, though. " "O, get out. You can't make me believe you had rather stay in a sickroom and set up with a boy, than to take a girl to the 4th of July, "said the grocery man, as he took a brush and wiped the saw dust off somebottles of peppersauce that he was taking out of a box. "You didn'thave any trouble with the girl, did you?" "No, --not with her, " saidthe boy, as he looked into the little round zinc mirror to see if hiseyebrows were beginning to grow. "But her Pa is so unreasonable. I thinka man ought to know better than to kick a boy right where he has had apack of firecrackers explode in his pocket. You see, when I brought thegirl back home, she was a wreck. Don't you ever take a girl to the 4thof July. Take the advice of a boy who has had experience. We hadn't morethan got to the Soldier's Home grounds before some boys who were playingtag grabbed hold of my girl's crushed-strawberry polonaise and ripped itoff. That made her mad, and she wanted me to take offense at it, and Itried to reason with the boys and they both jumped on me, and I see theonly way to get out of it honorably, was to get out real spry, and I gotout. Then we sat down under a tree, to eat lunch, and my girl swalloweda pickle the wrong way, and I pounded her on the back, the way Ma doeswhen I choke, and she yelled, and a policeman grabbed me and shook me, and asked me what I was hurting that poor girl for, and told me if I didit again he would arrest me. Everything went wrong. " [Illustration: Fourth of July misadventures 178] "After dark somebody fired a Roman candle into my girl's hat, and set iton fire, and I grabbed the hat and stamped on it, and spoiled the hairher Ma bought her. By gosh, I thought her hair was curly, but when thewig was off, her hair was as straight as could be. But she was purty, all the same. We got under another tree, to get away from the smell ofburned hair, and a boy set off a niger chaser, and it ran right at mygirl's feet, and burned her stockings, and a woman put the fire out forher, while I looked for the boy that fired the niger chaser, but I did'ntwant to find him. She was pretty near a wreck by that time, though shehad all her dress left except the polonaise, and we went and sat under atree in a quiet place, and I put my arm around her and told her neverto mind the accidents, cause it would be dark when we got home, andjust then a spark dropped down through the trees and fell in my pistolpocket, right next to her, where my bunch of fire crackers was, and theybegan to go off. Well, I never saw such a sight as she was. Her dresswas one of these mosquito bar, cheese cloth dresses, and it burned justlike punk. I had presence of mind enough to roll her on the grass andput out the fire, but in doing that I neglected my own conflagration, and when I got her put out, my coat tail and trousers were a total loss. _My_, but she looked like a goose that had been picked, and I lookedlike a fireman that fell through a hatchway. My girl wanted to go home, and I took her home, and her pa was setting on the front steps, and hewouldn't accept her, looking that way. He said he placed in my possessiona whole girl, clothed in her right mind, and I had brought back a burntoffering. He teaches in our Sunday-school, and knows how to talkpious, but his boots are offul thick. I tried to explain that I was notresponsible for the fireworks, and that he could bring in a bill againstthe government and I showed him how I was bereaved of a coat tail andsome pants, but he wouldn't reason at all, and when his foot hit me Ithought it was the resurrection, sure, and when I got over the fence, and had picked myself up I never stopped till I got to Duffy's and Iset up with him, cause I thought her pa was after me, and I thoughthe wouldn't enter a sick room and maul a watcher at the bedside of aninvalid. But that settles it with me about celebrating. I don't care ifwe _did_ whip the British, after declaring independence, I don't want mypants burnt off. What is the declaration of independence good for to agirl who looses her polonaise, and has her hair burnt off, and a niggerchaser burning her stockings? No, sir, they may talk about the glorious4th of July, but will it bring back that blonde wig, or re-tail my coat?Hereafter I am a rebel, and I will go out in the woods the way Pa does, and come home with a black eye, got in a rational way. "What, did your Pa get a black eye, too? I hadn't heard about that, "said the grocery man, giving the boy a handful of unbaked peanuts todraw him out. "Didn't get to fighting, did he?" "No, Pa don't fight. It is wrong, he says, to fight, unless you aresure you can whip the fellow, and Pa always gets whipped, so he quitfighting. You see, one of the deacons in our church lives out on a farm, and his folks were going away to spend the 4th, and he had to do all thechores, so he invited Pa and Ma to come out to the farm and have a nicequiet time, and they went. There is nothing Pa likes better than to goout on a farm, and pretend he knows everything. When the farmer got Paand Ma out there he set them to work, and Ma shelled peas while Pa wentto dig potatoes for dinner. I think it was mean for the deacon to sendPa out in the corn field to dig potatoes, and set the dog on Pa, andtree him in an apple tree near the bee hives, and then go and visitwith Ma and leave Pa in the tree with the dog barking at him. Pa saidhe never knew how mean a deacon could be, until he had sat on a limb ofthat apple tree all the afternoon. About time to do chores the farmercame and found Pa, and called the dog off, and Pa came down, and thenthe farmer played the meanest trick of all. He said city people didn'tknow how to milk cows, and Pa said he wished he had as many dollarsas he knew how to milk cows. He said his spechulty was milking kickingcows, and the farmer gave Pa a tin pail and a milking stool and let downthe bars, and pointed out to Pa 'the worst cow on the place. ' Pa knewhis reputation was at stake, and he went up to the cow and punched it inthe flank and said, "hist, confound you. " Well, the cow wasn't a histingcow, but a histing bull, and Pa knew it was a bull as quick as he seeit put down its head and beller, and Pa dropped the pail and stool andstarted for the bars, and the bull after Pa. I don't think it was rightin Ma to bet two shillings with the farmer that Pa would get to the barsbefore the bull did, though she won the bet. Pa said he knew it was abull just as soon as the horns got tangled up in his coat tail, and whenhe struck on the other side of the bars, and his nose hit the ash barrelwhere they make lye for soap, Pa said he saw more fireworks than we didat the Soldier's Home, Pa wouldn't celebrate any more, and he came home, after thanking the farmer for his courtesies, but he wants me to borrowa gun and go out with him hunting. We are going to shoot a bull and adog, and some bees, may be we will shoot the farmer, if Pa keeps on asmad as he is now. Well, we won't have another 4th of July for a year, and may be by that time my girl's polonaise and hair will grow out, andthat bull may become gentle, so Pa can milk it. Ta-ta. " CHAPTER XXI. WORKING OK SUNDAY--TURNING A GRINDSTONE IS HEALTHY--"NOT ANY GRINDSTONE FOR HENNERY!"--THIS HYPOCRISY IS PLAYED OUT-- ANOTHER JOB ON THE OLD MAN--HOW THE DAYS OF THE WEEK GOT MIXED--THE NUMEROUS FUNERALS--THE MINISTER APPEARS--THE BAD BOY GOES OVER THE BACK FENCE. "Hello, " said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in looking sickat heart, and all broke up, "How is your muscle this morning?" "All right enough, " said the boy, with a look of inquiry, as thoughwondering what was coming next. "Why?" "O, nothing, only I was going to grind the hatchet, and some knives andthings, this morning, and I thought maybe you would like to go outin the shed and turn the grindstone for me, to develop your muscles. Turning a grindstone is the healthiest thing a boy can do. " "That is all right enough, " said the bad boy, as he took up a sweetcracker, "but please take a good look at me. Do I look like a grindstoneboy? Do I resemble a good little boy that can't say 'no, ' and goes offand turns a grindstone half a day for some old duffer, who pays him bygiving him a handful of green currants, or telling him he will be a mansome day, and the boy goes off one way, with a lame back, while thegood man goes the other way, with a sharp scythe, and a chuckle atthe softness of the boy? You are mistaken in me. I have passed thegrindstone period, and you will have to pick up another sardine who hasnever done circular work. Not any grindstone for Hennery, if you please. " "You are getting too smart, " said the grocery man, as he charged apound of sweet crackers to the boy's father. "You don't have to turn thegrindstone if you don't want to. " "That's what I thought, " says the boy as he takes a handful ofblueberries. "You grindstone sharps, who are always laying for a foolboy to give taffy to, and get him to break his back, don't play it fineenough. You bear on too hard on the grindstone. I have seen the timewhen a man could get me to turn a grindstone for him till the cows comehome, by making me believe it was fun, and by telling me he never sawa boy that seemed to throw so much soul into turning a grindstone as Idid, but I have found that such men are hypocrites. They inveigle a boyinto their nest, like the spider does the fly, and at first they don'tbear on hard, but just let the blade of the axe or the scythe touchthe grindstone, and they make a boy believe he is a bigger man than oldGrant. They bet him he will get tired, and he bets that he can turn agrindstone as long as anybody, and when the boy has got his reputationat stake, then they begin to bear on hard, and the boy gets tired, buthe holds out, and when the tools are ground he says he is as fresh asa daisy, when he is tired enough to die. Such men do more to teach boysthe hollowness of the world, and its tricky features, than anything, andthey teach boys to know who are friends and who are foes. No, sir, thebest way is to hire a grown person to turn year grind one. I remember Iturned a grindstone four hours for a farmer once, and when I got throughhe said I could go to the spring and drink all the water I wanted fornothing. He was the tightest man I ever saw. Why, tight! That man wastight enough to hold kerosene. " "That's all right. Who wanted you to turn grindstone anyway? But whatis it about your Pa and Ma being turned out of church? hear that theyscandalized themselves horribly last Sunday. " "Well, you see, me and my chum put up a job on Pa to make him thinkSunday was only Saturday and Ma she fell into it, and I guess we are allgoing to get fired from the church for working on Sunday. You see theydidn't go to meetin' last Sunday because Ma's new bonnet hadn't come, and Monday and Tuesday it rained and the rest of the week was so muddyno one called, or they could not get anywhere, so Monday I slid outearly and got the daily paper, and on Tuesday my chum he got the paperoff the steps and put Monday's paper in its place. I watched when theywere reading it, but they did not notice the date. Then Wednesday we putTuesday's paper on the steps and Pa said it seemed more than Tuesday, but Ma she got the paper of the day before and looked at the date andsaid it seemed so to her but she guessed they had lost a day somehow. Thursday we got Wednesday's paper on the steps, and Friday we rung inThursday's paper, and Saturday my chum he got Friday's paper on thesteps, and Ma said she guessed she would wash to-morrow, and Pa said hebelieved he would hoe in the garden and get the weeds out so it wouldlook better to folks when they went by Sunday to church. Well, Sundaymorning came, and with it Saturday's daily paper, and Pa barely glancedit over as he got on his overalls and went out in his shirt sleeves ahoeing in the front garden. And I and my chum helped Ma carry water towash. She said it seemed like the longest week she ever saw, but whenwe brought the water, and took a plate of pickles to the hired girl thatwas down with the mumps, we got in the lilac bushes and waited for thecurtain to rise. It wasn't long before folks began going to church andyou'd a dide laughing to see them all stop in front of where Ma waswashing and look at her, and then go on to where Pa was hoeing weeds andstop and look at him, and then drive on. After about a dozen teams hadpassed I heard Ma ask Pa if he knew who was dead, as there must be afuneral somewhere. Pa had just hoed into a bumblebee's nest and said hedid not know of any that was dead, but knew some that ought to be, andMa she did not ask any foolish questions any more. After about twentyteams had stopped, Ma she got nervous and asked Deacon Smith if he sawanything green; he said something about desecration, and drove awayDeacon Brown asked Pa if he did not think he was setting, a bad examplebefore his boy; but Pa, he said he thought it would be a good one if theboy could only be hired to do it. Finally Ma got mad and took the tubbehind the house where they could not see her. About four o'clock thatafternoon we saw a dozen of our congregation headed by the minister, file into our yard, and my chum and I knew it was time to fly, so wegot on the back steps where we could hear. Pa met them at the door, expecting some bad news; and when they were seated, Ma she came in andremarked it was a very unhealthy year, and it stood people in hand tomeet their latter end. None of them said a word until the elder put onhis specs, and said it was a solemn occasion, and Ma she turned pale, and wondered who it could be, and Pa says 'don't keep us in suspense, who is dead?' and the elder said no one was dead; but they called as aduty they owed the cause to take action on them for working on Sunday. Ma, she fainted away, and they threw a pitcher of water down her back, and Pa said he guessed they were a pack of lunatics, but they all sworeit was Sunday, and they saw Ma washing and Pa out hoeing, as they wentto church, and they had called to take action on them. Then there wasa few minutes low conversation I could not catch, and then we heard Pakick his chair over and say it was more tricks of that darned boy. Thenwe knew it was time to adjourn, and I was just getting through the backfence as Pa reached me with a barrel stave, and that's what makes melimp some!" "That was real mean in you boys, " said the grocery man. "It will be hardfor your Pa and Ma to explain that matter. Just think how bad they mustfeel. " "O, I don't know. I remember hearing Pa and Uncle Ezra tell how theyfooled their father once, and got him to go to mill with a grist, onSunday, and Pa said he would defy anybody to fool him on the day of theweek. I don't think a man ought to tempt his little boy by defying himto fool his father. Well, I'll take a glass of your fifty cent cider andgo, " and soon the grocery man looked out the window and found somebodyhad added a cypher to the 'Sweet cider, only five cents a glass, ' makingit an expensive drink, considering it was made of sour apples. CHAPTER XXII. THE OLD MAN AWFULLY BLOATED--THE OLD MAN BEGINS DRINKING AGAIN--THINKS BETTING IS HARMLESS--HAD TO WALK HOME FROM CHICAGO--THE SPECTACLES CHANGED--A SMALL SUIT OF CLOTHES-- THE OLD MAN AWFULLY BLOATED--"HENNERY YOUR PA IS A MIGHTY SICK MAN"--THE SWELLING SUDDENLY GOES DOWN. "Come in, " said the grocery man to the bad boy, as the youth stoodon the steps in an uncertain sort of away, as though he did not knowwhether he would be welcome or not. "I tell you, boy, I pity you. Iunderstand your Pa has got to drinking again. It is too bad. I can'tthink of anything that humiliates a boy, and makes him so ashamed, asto have a father that is in the habit of hoisting in too much benzine. A boy feels as though everybody was down on him, and I don't wonder thatsuch boys often turn out bad. What started your Pa to drinking again?" "O, Ma thinks it was losing money on the Chicago races. You see, Pa isgreat on pointers. He don't usually bet unless he has got a sure thing, but when he gets what they call a pointer, that is, somebody tells him acertain horse is sure to win, because the other horses are to be pulledback, he thinks a job has been put up, and if he thinks he is on theinside of the ring he will bet. He says it does not do any hurt to bet, if you win, and he argues that a man who wins lots of money can do agreat deal of good with it. But he had to walk home from the Chicagoraces all the same, and he has been steaming ever since. Pa can't standadversity. But I guess we have got him all right now. He is the scartestman you ever saw, " and the boy took a can opener and began to cut thezinc under the stove, just to see if it would work as well on zinc as ontin. "What, you haven't been dissecting him again, have you?" said thegrocery man, as he pulled a stool up beside the boy to hear the news. How did you bring him to his senses?" "Well, Ma tried having the minister talk to Pa, but Pa talkedBible, about taking a little wine for the stomach's sake, and gaveillustrations about Noah getting full, so the minister couldn't bracehim up, and then Ma had some of the sisters come and talk to him, buthe broke them all up by talking about what an appetite they had forchampagne punch when they were out in camp last summer, and theycouldn't have any affect on him, and so Ma said she guessed I would haveto exercise my ingenuity on Pa again. Ma has an idea that I have gotsome sense yet, so I told her that if she would do just as I said, meand my chum would scare Pa so he would swear off. She said she would, and we went to work. First I took Pa's spectacles down to an optician, Saturday night, and had the glasses taken out and a pair put in theirplace that would magnify, and I took them home and put them in Pa'sspectacle case. Then I got a suit of clothes from my chum's uncle'strunk, about half the size of Pa's clothes. My chum's uncle is a verysmall man, and Pa is corpulent. I got a plug hat three sizes smallerthan Pa's hat, and the name out of Pa's hat and put it in the small hat. I got a shirt about half big enough for Pa, and put his initials onthe thing under the bosom, and got a number fourteen collar. Pa wearsseventeen. Pa had promised to brace up and go to church Sunday morning, and Ma put these small clothes where Pa could put them on. I told Ma, when Pa woke up, to tell him he looked awfully bloated, and excite hiscuriosity, and then send for me. " "You didn't play such a trick as that on a poor old man, did you?" saidthe grocery man, as a smile came over his face. "You bet. Desperate diseases require desperate remedies. Well, Ma toldPa he looked awfully bloated, and that his dissipation was killing him, as well as all the rest of the family. Pa said he guessed he wasn'tbloated very much, but he got up and put on his spectacles and looked athimself in the glass. You'd a dide to see him look at himself. His facelooked as big as two faces, through the glass, and his nose was a sight. Pa looked scared, and then he held up his hand and looked at that. Hishand looked like a ham. Just then I came in, and I turned pale, withsome chalk on my face, and I begun to cry, and I said, 'O, Pa, what ailsyou? You are so swelled up I hardly knew you. ' Pa looked sick to hisstomach, and then he tried to get on his pants. O, my, it was all Icould do to keep from laughing to see him pull them pants on. He couldjust get his legs in, and when I got a shoe horn and gave it to him, hewas mad. He said it was a mean boy that would give his Pa a shoe hornto put on his pants with. The pants wouldn't come around Pa into teninches, and Pa said he must have eat something that disagreed with him, and he laid it to watermelon. Ma stuffed her handkerchief in her mouthto keep from laffing, when she see Pa look at his-self. The legs of thepants were so tight Pa could hardly breathe, and he turned pale, andsaid, 'Hennery, your Pa is a mighty sick man, ' and then Ma and me bothlaughed, and he said we wanted him to die so we could spend his lifeinsurance in riotous living. " [Illustration: Hennery, your Pa is a mighty sick man 197] "But when Pa put on that condensed shirt, Ma she laid down on the loungeand fairly yelled, and I laughed till my side ached. Pa got it over hishead, and got his hands in the sleeves, and couldn't get it either way, and he couldn't see us laugh, but he could hear us, and he said, 'It'sdarned funny, ain't it, to have a parent swelled up this way. If I bustyou will both be sorry. ' Well, Ma took hold of one side of the shirt, and I took hold of the other, and we pulled it on, and when Pa's headcame up through the collar, his face was blue. Ma told him she wasafraid he would have a stroke of apoplexy before he got his clothes on, and I guess Pa thought so too. He tried to get the collar on, but itwouldn't go half way around his neck, and he looked in the glass andcried, he looked so. He sat down in a chair and panted, he was so outof breath, and the shirt and pants ripped, and Pa said there was no useliving if he was going to be a rival to a fat woman in the side show. Just then I put the plug hat on Pa's head, and it was so small it wasgoing to roll off, when Pa tried to fit it on his head, and then he tookit off and looked inside of it, to see if it was his hat, and when hefound his name in it, he said 'Take it away. My head is all wrong too. 'Then he told me to go for the doctor, mighty quick. I got the doctor andtold him what we were trying to do with Pa, and he said he would finishthe job. So the Doc. Came in, and Pa was on the lounge, and when theDoc. Saw him, he said it was lucky he was called just as he was, or wewould have required an undertaker. He put some pounded ice on Pa's headthe first thing, ordered the shirt cut open, and we got the pants off. Then he gave Pa an emetic, and had his feet soaked, and Pa said, 'Doc. , if you will bring me out of this I will never drink another drop. 'The Doc. Told Pa that his life was not worth a button if he ever drankagain, and left about half a pint of sugar pills to be fired into Paevery five minutes. Ma and me sat up with Pa all day Sunday, and Mondaymorning I changed the spectacles, and took the clothes home, and alongabout noon Pa said he felt as though he could get up. Well, you neversee a tickleder man than he was when he found the swelling had gone downso he could get his pants and shirt on, and he says that doctor isthe best in this town. Ma says I am a smart boy, and Pa has taken thepledge, and we are all right. Say, you don't think there is anythingwrong in a boy playing it on his Pa once in a while, do you?" "Not much, You have very likely saved your Pa's life. No, sir, joking isall right when by so doing you can break a person of a bad habit, " andthe grocery man cut a chew of tobacco off a piece of plug that was onthe counter, which the boy had soaked in kerosene, and before he hadfairly got it rolled in his cheek he spit it out and began to gag, and as the boy started leisurely out the door the grocery man said, "Lookahere, condemn you, don't you ever tamper with my tobacco again, orby thunder I'll maul you, " and he followed the boy to the door, spitting cotton all the way; and, as the boy went around the corner, thegroceryman thought how different a joke seemed when it was on somebodyelse. And then he turned to go in and rinse the kerosene out of hismouth, and found a sign on a box of new, green apples, as follows:-- COLIC OR CHOLERA INFANTUM YOU PAYS YOUR MONEY AND TAKES YOUR CHOICE. CHAPTER XXIII. GHOSTS DON'T STEAL WORMY FIGS--A GRAND REHERSAL--THE MINISTER MURDERS HAMLET--THE WATER-MELON KNIFE--THE OLD MAN WANTED TO REHERSE THE DRUNKEN SCENE IN RIP VAN WINKLE--NO HUGGING ALLOWED--HAMLET WOULDN'T HAVE TWO GHOSTS-"HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE AN IDIOT. " "I am thy father's ghost, " said a sheeted form in the doorway of thegrocery, one evening, and the grocery man got behind the cheese box, while the ghost continued in a sepulchral voice, "doomed for a certaintime to walk the night, " and, waving a chair round, the ghost strode upto the grocery man, and with the other ghostly hand reached into a boxof figs. "No you ain't no ghost, " said the grocery man, recognizing the bad boy. "Ghosts do not go prowling around groceries stealing wormy figs. Whatdo you mean by this sinful masquerade business? My father never had noghost!" "O, we have struck it now, " said the bad boy as he pulled off his maskand rolled up the sheet he had worn around him. "We are going to haveamateur theatricals, to raise money to have the church carpeted, and Iam going to boss the job. " "You don't say, " answered the grocery man, as he thought how much hecould sell to the church people for a strawberry and ice cream festival, and how little he could sell for amateur theatricals. "Who is going intoit and what are you going to play?" "Pa and Ma, and me, and the minister, and three choir singers, and mychum, and the minister's wife, and two deacons, and an old maid arerehersing, but we have not decided what to play yet. They all want toplay a different play, and I am fixing it so they can all be satisfied. The minister wants to play Hamlet, Pa wants to play Rip Van Winkle, Ma wants to play Mary Anderson, the old maid wants to play a boardingschool play, and the choir singers want an opera, and the minister'swife wants to play Lady Macbeth, and my chum and me want to play adouble song and dance, and I am going to give them all a show. We had arehersal last night, and I am the only one able to be around to-day. Yousee they have all been studying different plays, and they all wanted totalk at once. We let the minister sail in first. He had on a pair of hiswife's black stockings, and a mantle made of a linen buggy lap blanketand he wore a mason's cheese knife such as these fellows with pokebonnets and white feathers wear when they get an invitation to a funeralor an excursion. Well, you never saw Hamlet murdered the way he didit. His interpretation of the character was that Hamlet was a Dude thattalked through his nose, and while he was repeating Hamlet's soliloquy, Pa, who had come in with an old hunting suit on, as Rip Van Winkle, went to sleep, and he didn't wake up till Lady Macbeth came in, in thesleep-walking scene. She couldn't find a knife, so I took a slice ofwatermelon and sharpened it for her, and she made a mistake in the oneshe was to stab, and she stabbed Hamlet in the neck with a slice ofwatermelon, and the core of the melon fell on Pa's face, as he layasleep as Rip, and when Lady Macbeth said, 'Out damned spot, ' Pa wokeup and felt the gob of watermelon on his face and he thought he had beenmurdered, and Ma came in on a hop, skip and jump as 'Parthenia, ' andthrew her arms around a deacon who was going to play the grave digger, and began to call him pet names, and Pa was mad, and the choir singersthey began to sing, 'In the North Sea lived a whale, ' and then they quitacting. You'd a dide to see Hamlet. The piece of watermelon went downhis neck, and Lady Macbeth went off and left it in the wound under hiscollar, and Ma had to pull it out, and Hamlet said the seeds and thejuice was running down inside his shirt, and he said he wouldn't play ifhe was going to be stabbed with a slice of melon, so while his wife wasgetting the melon seeds out of his neck, and drying the juice on hisshirt, I sharpened a cucumber for Lady Macbeth to use as a dagger, butHamlet kicked on cucumbers, too, and I had more trouble than any stagemanager ever had. Then Pa wanted to rehearse the drunken scene in RipVan Winkle, where he hugs Grechten and drinks out of a flask behindher back, and he got one of the choir singers to act as Grechten, and Iguess he would have been hugging till this time, and have swallowedthe flask if Ma had not taken him by the ear, and said a little of thatwould go a good ways in an entertainment for the church. Pa said hedidn't know as it was any worse than her prancing up to a grave diggerand hugging him till the filling came out of his teeth, and then theminister decided that we wouldn't have any hugging at all in the play, and the choir girls said they wouldn't play, and the old maids struck, and the play come to a stand still. " "Well, that beats anything I ever heard tell of. It's a shame forpeople outside the profession to do play acting, and I won't go tothe entertainment unless I get a pass, " said the grocery man. "Did yourehearse any more?" "Yes, the minister wanted to try the ghost scene, " said the boy, "andhe wanted me to be the ghost. Well, they have two 'Markses' and two'Topsies' in Uncle Tom's cabin, and I thought two ghosts in Hamlet wouldabout fill the bill for amateurs, so I got my chum to act as one ghost. We broke them all up. I wanted to have something new in ghosts, so mychum and me got two pair of Ma's long stockings, one pair red and onepair blue, and I put on a red one and a blue one, and my chum did thesame. Then we got some ruffled clothes belonging to Ma, with flouncesand things on, and put them on so they came most down to our knees, and we put sheets over us, clear to our feet, and when Hamlet got toyearning for his father's ghost, I came in out of the bath room with thesheet over me, and said I was the huckleberry he was looking for, and mychum followed me out and said he was a twin ghost, also, and then Hamletgot on his ear and said he wouldn't play with two ghosts, and he wentoff pouting, and then my chum and me pulled off the sheets and danced aclog dance. Well, when the rest of the troop saw our make up, it nearlykilled them. Most of them had seen ballet dancers, but they never sawthem with different colored socks. The minister said the benefit wasrapidly becoming a farce, and before we had danced half a minute Ma sherecognized her socks, and she came for me with a hot box, and made metake them off, and Pa was mad and said the dancing was the only thingthat was worth the price of admission, and he scolded Ma, and the choirgirls sided with Pa, and just then my chum caught his toe in the carpetand fell down, and that loosened the plaster overhead and about abushel fell on the crowd. Pa thought lightning had struck the house, theminister thought it was a judgment on them all for play acting, and hebegan to shed his Hamlet costume with one hand and pick the plasterout of his hair with the other. The women screamed and tried to getthe plaster out of their necks, and while Pa was brushing off the choirsingers Ma said the rehearsal was adjourned, and they all went home, but we are going to rehearse again on Friday night. The play cannot beconsidered a success, but we will bring it out all right by the time theentertainment is to come off. " "By gum, " said the grocery man, "I would like to have seen that ministeras Hamlet. Didn't he look funny?" "Funny! Well, I should remark. He seemed to predominate. That is, hewas too fresh, too numerous, as it were. But at the next rehearsal I amgoing to work in an act from Richard the Third, and my chum is goingto play the Chinaman of the Danites, and I guess we will take the cake. Say, I want to work in an idiot somewhere. How would you like to playthe idiot. You wouldn't have to rehearse or anything--" At this point the bad boy was seen to go out of the grocery store realspry, followed by a box of wooden clothes-pins that the grocery man hadthrown after him. CHAPTER XXIV. THE CRUEL WOMAN AND THE LUCKLESS DOG--THE BAD BOY WITH A DOG AND A BLACK EYE-WHERE DID YOU STEAL HIM?--ANGELS DON'T BREAK DOGS' LEGS--A WOMAN WHO BREAKS DOGS' LEGS HAS NO SHOW WITH ST. PETER--ANOTHER BURGLAR SCARE--THE GROCERY DELIVERY MAN SCARED. "Hello!" said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in with a blackeye, leading a hungry looking dog that was walking on three legs, andhad one leg tied up with a red silk handkerchief. "What is this--a partof your amateur theater? Now you get out of here with that dog, mightyquick. A boy that hurts dogs so they have to have their legs tied up, isno friend of mine, " and the grocery man took up a broom to drive the dogout doors. "There, you calm, yourself, " says the boy to the grocery man, as the doggot behind the boy and looked up at the grocery man as though he wasnot afraid as long as the bad boy was around. "Set up the crackers andcheese, sausage, and pickles, and everything this dog wants to eat--heis a friend of mine--that dog is my guest, and those are my splints onhis broken leg, and that is my handkerchief that my girl gave me, woundaround it, and you touch that dog except in the way of kindness, anddown comes your house. " And the boy doubled up his fists as though hemeant business. "Poor doggie, " said the grocery man, as he cut off a piece of sausageand offered it to the dog, which was declined with thanks, expressed bythe wagging tail. "Where did you steal him?" "I didn't steal him, and he is no cannibal. He won't eat your sausage!"and the boy put up his elbow as though to ward off on imaginary blow. "You see, this dog was following off a pet dog that belonged to a woman, and she tried to shoo him away, but he wouldn't shoo. This dog did notknow that he was a low born, miserable dog, and had no right to move inthe society of an aristocratic pet dog, and he followed right along. Hethought this was a free country, and one dog was as good as another, andhe followed that woman and her pet dog right into her door yard. The petdog encouraged this dog, and he went in the yard, and when the woman gotup on the steps she threw a velocipede at this dog and broke his leg, and then she took up her pet and went in the house so she wouldn't hearthis dog howl. She is a nice woman, and I see her go to meeting everySunday with a lot of morocco books in her hands, and once I pumped theorgan in the church where she goes, and she was so pious I thought shewas an angel--but angels don't break dogs' legs. I'll bet when she goesup to the gate and sees St. Peter open the book and look for the chargesagainst her, she will tremble as though she had fits. And when St. Peterruns his finger down the ledger, and stops at the dog column, and turnsand looks at her over his spectacles, and says, "Madam, how about yourstabbing a poor dog with a velocipede, and breaking its leg?" shewill claim it was an accident; but she can't fool Pete. He is on toeverybody's racket, and if they get in there, they have got to have aclean record. " "Say, look-a-here, " said the grocery man, as he looked at the boy inastonishment as he unwound the handkerchief to dress the dog's brokenleg, while the dog looked up in the boy's face with an expression ofthankfulness and confidence that he was an able practitioner in dogbone-setting, "what kind of talk is that? You talk of heaven as thoughits books were kept like the books of a grocery and you speak toofamiliarly of St. Peter. " "Well, I didn't mean any disrespect, " said the boy, as he fixed thesplint on the dog's leg, and tied it with a string, while the dog lickedhis hand, "but I learned in Sunday school that up there they watch eventhe sparrow's fail, and they wouldn't be apt to get left on a dog biggerthan a whole flock of sparrows, 'specially when the dog's fall wasaccompanied with such noise as a velocipede makes when it falls downstairs. No sir, a woman who throws a velocipede at a poor, homeless dog, and breaks its leg, may carry a car load of prayer books, and she mayattend to all the sociables, but according to what I have been told, ifshe goes sailing up to the gate of New Jerusalem, as though she ownedthe whole place, and expects to be ushered into a private box, she willget left. The man in the box office will tell her she is not on thelist, and that there is a variety show below, where the devil is a star, and fallen angels are dancing the cancan with sheet-iron tights, onbrimstone lakes, and she can probably crawl under the canvas, butshe can't get in among the angelic hosts until she can satisfactorilyexplain that dog story that is told on her. Possibly I have got a rawway of expressing myself, but I had rather take my chances, if I shouldapply for admission up there, with this lame dog under my arm than totake hers with a pug that hain't got any legs broke. A lame dog and aclear conscience beats a pet dog, when your conscience feels nervous. Now I am going to lay this dog in the barrel of dried apples, where yourcat sleeps, and give him a little rest, and I will give you four minutesto tell me all you know, and you will have three minutes on your handswith nothing to say. Unbutton your lip and give your teeth a vacation. " "Well, you _have_ got gall. However, I don't know but you are right thatwoman that hurt the dog. Still, it may have been her way of petting astrange dog. We should try to look upon the charitable side of peoples'eccentricities. But say, I want to ask you if you have seen anything ofmy man that delivers groceries. Saturday night I sent him over to yourhouse to deliver some things, about ten o'clock, and he has not showedup since. What do you think has become of him?" "Well, by gum, that accounts for it. Saturday night, about ten o'clockwe heard somebody in the back yard, around the kitchen door, just as wewere going to bed, and Pa was afraid it was a burglar after the churchmoney he had collected last Sunday. He had got to turn it over the nextday, to pay the minister's expenses on his vacation, and it made himnervous to have it around. I peeked out of the window and saw the man, and I told Pa, and Pa got a revolver and began shooting through thewire screen to the kitchen window, and I saw the man drop the basket andbegin to climb over the fence real sudden, and I went out and began togroan, as though somebody was dying in the alley, and I brought inthe basket with the mackerel and green corn, and told Pa that from thegroaning out there I guess he had killed the grocery delivery man, andI wanted Pa to go out and help me hunt for the body, but he said he wasgoing to take the midnight train to go out west on some business, and Palit out. I guess your man was scared and went one way and Pa was scaredand went the other. Won't they be astonished when they meet each otheron the other side of the world? Pa will shoot him again when they meet, if he gives Pa any sass. Pa says when he gets mad he had just as sooneat as to kill a man. " "Well, I guess my man has gone off to a Sunday pic-nic or something, andwill come back when he gets sober, but how are your theatricals gettingalong?" asked the grocery man. "O, that scheme is all busted, " said the boy. "At least until theminister gets back from his vacation. The congregation has noticed a redspot on his hand for some time, and the ladies said what he needed wasrest. They said if that spot was allowed to go on it might develope intoa pimple, and the minister might die of blood poison, superinduced byoverwork, and they took up a collection, and he has gone. The night theybid him good bye, the spot on his hand was the subject of much comment. The wimmen sighed, and said it was lucky they noticed the spot on hishand before it had sapped his young life away. Pa said Job had more thanfour hundred boils worse than that, and he never took a vacation, and then Ma dried Pa up. She told Pa he had never suffered from bloodpoison, and Pa said he could raise cat boils for the market, and neversqueal. Ma see the only way to shut Pa up was to let him go home withthe choir singer. So she bounced him off with her, and he didn't gethome till most 'leven o'clock, but Ma she set up for him. Maybe what shesaid to Pa made him go west after peppering your burglar. Well, I mustgo home now, 'cause I run the family, since Pa lit out. Say, send someof your most expensive canned fruit and things over to the house. Darnthe expense. " And the bad boy took the lame dog under his arm and walkedout. CHAPTER XXV. THE BAD BOY GROWS THOUGHTFUL--WHY IS LETTUCE LIKE A GIRL?-- KING SOLOMON A FOOL--THINK OF ANY SANE MAN HAVING A THOUSAND WIVES--HE WOULD HAVE TO HAVE TWO HOTELS DURING VACATION--300 BLONDES--600 BRUNETTES, ETC--A THOUSAND WIVES TAKING ICE CREAM--I DON'T ENVY SOLOMON HIS THOUSAND. "What you sitting there like a bump on a log for?" asked the grocery manof the bad boy, as the youth had sat on a box for half an hour, withhis hands in his pockets, looking at a hole in the floor, until his eyeswere set like a dying horse. "What you thinking of, anyway? It seems tome boys set around and think more than they used to when I was a boy, "and the groceryman brushed the wilted lettuce and shook it, and triedto make it stand up stiff and crisp, before he put it out doors; but thecontrary lettuce which had been picked the day before, looked so tiredthat the boy noticed it. "That lettuce reminds me of a girl. Yesterday I was in here when it wasnew, like the girl going to the picnic, and it was as fresh and proud, and starched up, and kitteny, and full of life, and as sassy as a girlstarting out for a picnic. To-day it has got back from the picnic, and, like the girl, the starch is all taken out, and it is limber, andlanguid, and tired, and can't stand up alone, and it looks as though itwanted to be laid at rest beside the rotten apples in the alley, ratherthan be set out in front of a store to be sold to honest people, andgive them the gangrene of the liver, " and the boy put on a healthcommissioner air that frightened the grocery man, and he threw thelettuce out the back door. "You never mind about my lettuce, " said the grocery man, "I can attendto my affairs. But now tell me what you were thinking about here all themorning?" "I was thinking what a fool King Solomon was, " said the boy, with theair of one who has made a statement that has got to be argued prettystrong to make it hold water. "Now, lookahere, " said the grocery man in anger, "I have stood itto have you play tricks on me, and have listened to your condemnedfoolishness without a murmur as long as you have confined yourself topeople now living, but when you attack Solomon--the wisest man, thegreat king--and call him a fool, friendship ceases, and you must getout of this store. Solomon in all his glory, is a friend of mine, and nofool boy is going to abuse him in my presence. Now, you dry up!" "Sit down on the ice box, " said the boy to the grocery man, "what youneed is rest. You are overworked. Your alleged brain is equal to wiltedlettuce, and it can devise ways and means to hide rotten peaches undergood ones, so as to sell them to blind orphans; but when it comes tograsping great questions, your small brain cannot comprehend them. Yourbrain may go up sideways to a great question and rub against it, but itcannot surround it, and grasp it. That's where you are deformed. Now, it is different with me. I can raise brain to sell to you grocery men. Listen. This Solomon is credited with being the wisest man, and yethistory says he had a thousand wives. Just think of it. You have got onewife, and Pa has got one, and all the neighbors have one, if they havehad any kind of luck. Does not one wife make you pay attention? Wouldn'ttwo wives break you up? Wouldn't three cause you to see stars? How wouldten strike you? Why, man alive, you do not grasp the magnitude of thestatement that Solomon had a thousand wives. A thousand wives, standingside by side, would reach about four blocks. Marching by fours it wouldtake them twenty minutes to pass a given point. The largest summerresort hotel only holds about five hundred people, so Sol would have hadto hire two hotels if he took his wives out for a day in the country. Ifyou would stop and think once in a while you would know more. " The grocery man's eyes had begun to stick out as the bad boy continued, as though the statistics had never been brought to his attention before, but he was bound to stand by his old friend Solomon, and he said, "Well, Solomon's wives must have been different from our wives of the presentday. " "Not much, " said the boy, as he see he was paralizing the grocery man. "Women have been about the same ever since Eve. She got mashed on theold original dude, and it stands to reason that Solomon's wives were nobetter than the mother of the human race. Statistics show that one womanout of every ten is red headed. That would give Solomon an even hundredred headed wives. Just that hundred red headed wives would be enoughto make an ordinary man think that there was a land that is fairer thanthis. Then there would be, out of the other nine hundred, about threehundred blondes, and the other six hundred would be brunettes, and mabehe had a few albinos, and bearded women, and fat women, and dwarfs. Now, those thousand women had appetites, desires for dress and style, thesame as all women. Imagine Solomon saying to them. 'Girls, lets all godown to the ice cream, saloon and have a dish of ice cream. ' Can you, with your brain muddled with codfish and new potatoes, realize the scenethat would follow? Suppose after Solomon's broom brigade bad got seatedin the ice creamery, one of the red headed wives should catch Solomonwinking at a strange girl at another table. You may think Solomon didnot know enough to wink, or that he was not that kind of a flirt, but he_must_ have been or he could never had succeeded in marrying a thousandwives, in a sparcely settled country. No, Sir, it looks to me as thoughSolomon in all his glory, was an old masher, and from what I have seenof men being bossed around with one wife, I don't envy Solomon histhousand. Why, just imagine that gang of wives going and ordering fallbonnets. Solomon would have to be a king, or a Vanderbilt to stand it. Ma wears five dollar silk stockings, and Pa kicks awfully when the billcomes in. Imagine Soloman putting up for a few thousand pair of silkstockings. I am glad you will sit down and reason with me in a rationalway about some of these Bible stories that take my breath away. Theminister stands me off when I try to talk with him about such things, and tells me to study the parable of the Prodigal Son, and the deaconstell me to go and soak my head. There is darn little encouragement for aboy to try and figure out things. How would you like to have a thousandred headed wives come into the store this minute and tell you theywanted you to send carriages around to the house at 3 o'clock so theycould go for a drive? Or how would you like to have a hired girl comerushing in and tell you to send up six hundred doctors, because sixhundred of your wives had been taken with cholera morbus? Or--" "O, don't mention it, " said the grocery man, with a shudder. "I wouldn'ttake Solomon's place, and be the natural protector of a thousand wivesif anybody would give me the earth. Think of getting up in a cold wintermorning and building a thousand fires. Think of two thousand pair ofhands in a fellow's hair! Boy, you have shown me that Solomon needed aguardian over him. He didn't have sense. " "Yes, " says the boy, "and think of two thousand feet, each one as coldas a brick of chocolate ice cream. A man would want a back as big as thefence of a fair ground. But I don't want to harrow up your feelings. Imust go and put some arnica on Pa. He has got home, and says he has beento a summer resort on a vacation, and he is all covered with blotches. He says it is mosquito bites, but Ma thinks he has been shot full ofbird shot by some water melon farmer. Ma hasn't got any sympathy for Pabecause he didn't take her along, but if she had been there she wouldhave been filled with bird shot, too. But you musn't detain me. BetweenPa and the baby I have got all I can attend to. The baby is teething, and Ma makes me put my fingers in the baby's mouth to help it cut teeth. That is a humiliating position for a boy as big as I am. Say, how manybabies do you figure that Solomon had to buy rubber toothing rings forin all his glory?" And the boy went out leaving the grocery man reflecting on what a familySolomon must have had, and how he needed to be the wisest man to getalong without a circus afternoon and evening. CHAPTER XXVI. FARM EXPERIENCES. THE BAD BOY WORKS ON A FARM FOR A DEACON-- HE KNOWS WHEN HE HAS GOT ENOUGH--HOW THE DEACON MADE HIM FLAX AROUND--AND HOW HE MADE IT WARM FOR THE DEACON. "Want to buy any cabbages?" said the bad boy to the grocery man, ashe stopped at the door of the grocery, dressed in a blue wamus, hisbreeches tucked in his boots, and an old hat on his head, with a holethat let out his hair through the top. He had got out of a democratwagon, and was holding the lines hitched to a horse about forty yearsold, that leaned against the hitching post to rest, "Only a shillingapiece. " "O, go 'way, " said the grocery man. "I only pay three cents apiece. " Andthen he looked at the boy and said "Hello, Hennery, is that you? I havemissed you all the week, and now you come on to me sudden, disguised asa granger. What does this all mean?" "It means that I have been the victim of as vile a conspiracy as everwas known since Cæesar was stabbed, and Marc Antony orated over hisprostrate corpse in the Roman forum, to an audience of supes and sceneshifters, " and the boy dropped the lines on the sidewalk, said, "whoa, gol darn you, " to the horse that was asleep, wiped his boots on thegrass in front of the store and came in, and seated himself on the oldhalf bushel. "There, this seems like home again. " "What's the row?--who has been playing it on you?" And the grocery mansmelled a sharp trade in cabbages, as well as other smells peculiar tothe farm. "Well, I'll tell you. Lately our folks have been constantly talking ofthe independent life of the farmer, and how easy it is, and how theywould like it if I would learn to be a farmer. They said there wasnothing like it, and several of the neighbors join'd in and said I hadthe natural ability to be one of the most successful farmers in thestate. They all drew pictures of the fun it was to work on a farm whereyou could get your work done and take your fish-pole and go off andcatch fish, or a gun, and go out and kill game, and how you could ride;horses, and pitch hay, and smell the sweet perfume, and go to huskingbees, and dances, and everything, and they got me all worked up so Iwanted to go to work on a farm. Then an old deacon that belongs to ourchurch, who runs a farm about eight miles out of town, he came on thescene, and said he wanted a boy, and if I would go out and work for himhe would be easy on me because he knew my folks, and we belonged to thesame church. I can see it now. It was all a put up job on me, just likethey play three card monte on a fresh stranger. I was took in. By gosh, I have been out there a week, and here's what there is left of me. Theonly way I got a chance to come to town was to tell the farmer I couldsell cabbages to you for a shilling a piece. I knew you sold them forfifteen cents and I thought that you would give a shilling. So thefarmer said he would pay me my wages in cabbages at a shilling apieceand only charge me a dollar for the horse and wagon to bring them in. Soyou only pay three cents. Here are thirty cabbages, which will come toninety cents. I pay a dollar for the horse, and when I get back to thefarm I owe the farmer ten cents, besides working a week for nothing. O, it is all right. I don't kick, but this ends farming for Hennery. I knowwhen I have got enough of an easy life on a farm. I prefer a hard life, breaking stones on the streets, to an easy, dreamy life on a farm. " "They _did_ play it on you, didn't they, " said the grocery man. "Butwasn't the old deacon a good man to work for?" "Good man nothing', " said the boy, as he took up a piece of horse radishand began to grate it on the inside of his rough hand. "I tell youthere's a heap of difference in a deacon in Sunday school, telling aboutsowing wheat and tares, and a deacon out on a farm in a hurry season, when there is hay to get in and wheat to harvest all at the same time. I went out to the farm Sunday evening with the deacon and his wife, andthey couldn't talk too much about the nice time we would have, and thefun; but the deacon changed more than forty degrees in five minutesafter we got to the farm. He jump'd out of the wagon and pulled off hiscoat, and let his wife climb out over the wheel, and yelled to the hiredgirl to bring out the milk pail, and told me to fly around and unharnessthe horse, and throw down a lot of hay for the work animals, and thentold me to run down to the pasture and drive up a lot of cows. Thepasture was half a mile away, and the cows were scattered around in thewoods, and the mosquitos were thick, and I got all covered with mud andburrs, and stung with thistles, and when I got the cattle near to thehouse, the old deacon yelled to me that I was slower than molasses inthe winter, and then I took a club and tried to hurry the cows, and heyelled at me to stop hurrying, 'cause I would retard the flow of milk. By gosh I _was_ mad. I asked for a mosquito bar to put over me next timeI went after the cows, and the people all laughed at me, and when Isat down on the fence to scrape the mud off my Sunday pants, thedeacon yelled like he does in the revival, only he said, 'come, come, procrastination is the thief of time. You get up and hump yourselfand go and feed the pigs. ' He was so darn mean that I could not helpthrowing a burdock burr against the side of the cow he was milking, andit struck her right in the flank on the other side from where the deaconwas. Well, you'd a dide to see the cow jump up and blat. All four ofher feet were off the ground at a time, and I guess most of them hit thedeacon on his Sunday vest, and the rest hit the milk pail, and the cowbacked against the fence and bellered, and the deacon was all coveredwith milk and cow hair, and he got up and throwed the three-legged stoolat the cow and hit her on the horn and it glanced off and hit me on thepants just as I went over the fence to feed the pigs. I didn't know adeacon could talk so sassy at a cow, and come so near swearing withoutactually saying cuss words. Well, I lugged swill until I was homesick tomy stomach, and then I had to clean off horses, and go to the neighborsabout a mile away to borrow a lot of rakes to use the next day. I was sotired I almost cried, and then I had to draw two barrels of water witha well bucket, to cleanse for washing the next day, and by that timeI wanted to die. It was most nine o'clock, and I began to think aboutsupper, when the deacon said all they had was bread and milk for supperSunday night, and I rasseled with a tin basin of skim milk, and someold back number bread, and wanted to go to bed, but the deacon wantedto know if I was heathen enough to want to go to bed without eveningprayers. There was no one thing I was less mashed on than eveningprayers about that minute, but I had to take a prayer half an hour longon the top of that skim milk, and I guess it curdled the milk, for Ihadn't been in bed more than half an hour before I had the worst colic aboy ever had, and I thought I should die all alone up in that garret, on the floor, with nothing to make my last hours pleasant but some ratsplaying with ears of seed corn on the floor, and mice running throughsome dry pea pods. But how different the deacon talked in the eveningdevotions from what he did when the cow was galloping on him in thebarnyard. Well, I got through the colic and was just getting to sleepwhen the deacon yelled for me to get up and hustle down stairs. Ithought may be the house was on fire, 'cause I smelled smoke, and I gotinto my trousers and came down stairs on a jump yelling 'fire, ' when thedeacon grabbed me and told me to get down on my knees, and before I knewit he was into the morning devotions, and when he said 'amen' and jumpedand said for us to fire breakfast into us quick and get to work doingchores. I looked at the clock and it was just three o'clock in themorning, just the time Pa comes home and goes to bed in town, when he isrunning a political campaign. Well, sir, I had to jump from one thing toanother from three o'clock in the morning till nine at night, pitchinghay, driving reaper, raking and binding, shocking wheat, hoeing corn, and everything, and I never got a kind word. I spoiled my clothes, andI think another week would make a pirate of me. But during it all I hadthe advantage of a pious example. I tell you, you think more of such aman as the deacon if you don't work for him, but only see him when hecomes to town, and you hear him sing 'Heaven is my Home, ' through hisnose. He even is farther from home than any place I ever heard of. Hewould be a good mate on a Mississippi river steamboat if he could swear, and I guess he could soon learn. Now you take these cabbages and giveme ninety cents, and I will go home and borrow ten cents to make upthe dollar, and send my chum back with the horse and wagon and myresignation. I was not cut out for a farmer. Talk about fishing, theonly fish I saw was a salt white fish we had for breakfast one morning, which was salted by Noah, in the ark, " and while the grocery man wasunloading the cabbages the boy went off to look for his chum, and laterthe two boys were seen driving off to the farm with two fishing polessticking out of the hind end of the wagon. CHAPTER XXVII. DRINKING CIDER IN THE CELLAR--THE DEACON WILL NOT ACCEPT HENNERY'S RESIGNATION--HE WANTS BUTTER ON HIS PANCAKES--HIS CHUM JOINS HIM--THE SKUNK IN THE CELLAR--THE POOR BOY GETS THE "AGER. " "Well, I swow, here comes a walking hospital, " said the grocery man asthe bad boy's shadow came in the store, followed by the boy, who lookedsick and yellow, and tired, and he had lost half his flesh. "What'sthe matter with you? Haven't got the yellow fever, have you?" and thegrocery man placed a chair where the invalid could fall into it. "No, got the ager, " said the boy as he wiped the perspiration off hisupper lip, and looked around the store to see if there was anything insight that would take the taste of quinine out of his mouth. "Had toomuch dreamy life of ease on the farm, and been shaking ever since. Darna farm anyway. " "What, you haven't been to work for the deacon any more, have you? Ithought you sent in your resignation;" and the grocery man offered theboy some limberger cheese to strengthen him. "O, take that cheese away, " said the boy, as he turned pale and gagged. "You don't know what a sick person needs any more than a professionalnurse. What I want is to be petted. You see I went out to the farm withmy chum, and I took the fish-poles and remained in the woods while hedrove the horse to the deacon's; and he gave the deacon my resignation, and the deacon wouldn't accept it. He said he would hold my resignationuntil after harvest, and then act on it. He said he could put me in jailfor breach of promise, if I quit work and left him without giving propernotice; and my chum came and told me, and so I concluded to go to workrather than have any trouble, and the deacon said my chum could work afew days for his board if he wanted to. It was pretty darn poor boardfor a boy to work for, but my chum wanted to be with me, so he stayed. Pa and Ma came out to the farm to stay a day or two to help. Pa wasgoing to help harvest, and Ma was going to help the deacon's wife, butPa wanted to carry the jug to the field, and lay under a tree while therest of us worked, and Ma just talked the arm off the deacon's wife. Thedeacon and Pa laid in the shade and see my chum and me work, and Ma andthe deacon's wife gossipped so they forgot to get dinner, and my chumand me organized a strike, but we were beaten by monopoly. Pa took me bythe neck and thrashed out a shock of wheat with my heels, and the deacontook my chum and sat down on him, and we begged and they gave us our oldsituations back. But we got even with them that night. I tell you, whena boy tries to be good, and quit playing jokes on people, and then haseverybody down on him, and has his Pa hire him out on a farm to work fora deacon that hasn't got any soul except when he is in church, and a boyhas to get up in the night to get breakfast and go to work, and has towork until late at night, and they kick because he wants to put butteron his pancakes, and feed him skim milk and rusty fat pork, it makes himtough, and he would play a joke on his aged grandmother. After my chumand me had got all the chores done that night, we sat out on a fenceback of the house in the orchard, eating green apples in the moonlight, and trying to think of a plan of revenge. Just then I saw a skunk backof the house, right by the outside cellar door, and I told my chum thatit would serve them right to drive the skunk down cellar and shut thedoor, but my chum said that would be too mean. I asked him if it wouldbe any meaner than for the deacon to snatch us baldheaded because wecouldn't mow hay away fast enough for two men to pitch it, and he saidit wouldn't, and so we got on each side of the skunk and sort of scaredit down cellar, and then we crept up softly and closed the cellar doors. Then we went in the house and I whispered to Ma and asked her if shedidn't think the deacon had some cider, and Ma she began to hint thatshe hadn't had a good drink of cider since last winter, and the deacon'swife said us boys could take a pitcher and go down cellar and draw some. That was too much. I didn't want any cider, anyway, so I told them thatI belonged to a temperance society, and I should break my pledge if Idrawed cider, and she said I was a good boy, for me never to touch a dropof cider. Then she told my chum where the cider barrel was, down cellar;but he ain't no slouch. He said he was afraid to go down cellar in thedark, and so Pa said he and the deacon would go down and draw the cider, and the deacon's wife asked Ma to go down too, and look at the fruitand berries she had canned for winter, and they all went down cellar. Pacarried an old tin lantern with holes in it, to light the deacon to thecider barrel; and the deacon's wife had a taller candle to show Ma thecanned fruit. I tried to get Ma not to go, cause Ma is a friend of mine, and I didn't want her to have anything to do with the circus; but shesaid she guessed she knew her business. When anybody says they guessthey know their own business, that settles it with me, and I don't tryto argue with them. Well, my chum and me sat there in the kitchen, andI stuffed a piece of red table cloth in my mouth to keep from laughing, and my chum held his nose with his finger and thumb, so he wouldn'tsnort right out. We could hear the cider run in the pitcher, and then itstopped, and the deacon drank out of the pitcher, and then Pa did, andthen they drawed some more cider, and Ma and the deacon's wife weretalking about how much sugar it took to can fruit, and the deacon toldPa to help himself out of a crock of fried cakes, and I heard the coveron the crock rattle, and just then I heard the old tin lantern rattle onthe brick floor of the cellar, the deacon said 'Merciful goodness;'Pa said 'Helen damnation, I am stabbed;' and Ma yelled 'goodness sakesalive;' and then there was a lot of dishpans on the stairs begun tofall, and they all tried to get up cellar at once, and they fell overeach other; and O, my, what a frowy smell came up to the kitchen fromthe cellar. It was enough to kill anybody. Pa was the first to get tothe head of the stairs, and he stuck his head in the kitchen, and drew along breath, and said '_whoosh!_ Hennery, your Pa is a mighty sick man. 'The deacon came up next, and he had run his head into a hanging shelfand broken a glass jar of huckleberries, and they were all over him, and he said 'give me air. Earth's but a desert drear. ' Then Ma and thedeacon's wife came up on a gallop, and they looked tired. Pa began topeel off his coat and vest and said he was going out to bury them, andMa said he could bury her, too, and I asked the deacon if he didn'tnotice a faint odor of sewer gas coming from the cellar, and my chumsaid it smelled more to him as though something had crawled in thecellar and died. Well, you never saw a sicker crowd, and I felt sorryfor Ma and the deacon, 'cause their false teeth fell out, and I knew Macouldn't gossip and the deacon couldn't talk sassy without teeth. Butyou'd a dide to see Pa. He was mad, and thought the deacon had put upthe job on him, and he was going to knock the deacon out in two rounds, when Ma said there was no use of getting mad about a dispensation ofprovidence, and Pa said one more such dispensation of providence wouldjust kill him on the spot. They finally got the house aired, and my chumand me slept on the hay in the barn, after we had opened the outsidecellar door so the animal could get out, and the next morning I had thefever and ague, and Pa and Ma brought me home, and I have been firingquinine down my neck ever since. Pa says it is malaria, but it isgetting up before daylight in the morning and prowling around a farmdoing chores before it is time to do chores, and I don't want any morefarm. I thought at Sunday school last Sunday, when the superintendenttalked about the odor of sanctity that pervaded the house on thatbeautiful morning, and looked at the deacon, that the deacon thoughtthe superintendent was referring to him and Pa, but may be it was anaccident. Well, I must go home and shoot another charge of quinine intome, " and the boy went out as if he was on his last legs, though he actedas if he was going to have a little fun while he did last.