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 the
bad boy of the grocery man, as he came in with his Sunday suit on, and
a bouquet in his button-hole, and pried off a couple of figs from a new
box that had been just opened.
“No sir,” said the groceryman, as he licked off the syrup that dripped
from a quart measure, from which he had been filling a jug. “I hold
that a man who gets mad at a practical joke, that is, one that does not
injure 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 me
smell of it,” and the grocery man bent over in front of the boy to take
a whiff at the bouquet. As he did so a stream of water shot out of the
innocent looking bouquet and struck him full in the face, and run down
over his shirt, and the grocery man yelled murder, and fell over a
barrel of axe helves and scythe snaths, and then groped around for a
towel to wipe his face.
“You condemn skunk,” said the grocery man to the boy, as he took up an
axe-helve and started for him, “what kind of a golblasted squirt gun
have you got there. I will maul you, by thunder,” and he rolled up his
shirt sleeves.
“There, keep your temper. I took a test vote of you on the subject of
practical jokes, before the machine began to play upon the conflagration
that was raging on your whiskey nose, and you said a man that would get
mad at a joke was a fool, and now I know it. Here, let me show it to
you. There is a rubber hose runs from the bouquet, inside my coat to
my pants pocket, and there is a bulb of rubber, that holds about half a
pint, and when a feller smells of the posey, I squeeze the bulb, and
you see the result. It's fun, where you don't squirt it on a person that
gets mad.”
The grocery man said he would give the boy half a pound of figs if
he would lend the bouquet to him for half an hour, to play it on a
customer, and the boy fixed it on the grocery man, and turned the nozzle
so it would squirt right back into the grocery man's face. He tried it
on 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 of
the water ran down the grocery man's trouser's leg, and he gave it up in
disgust, and handed it back to the boy.
“How was it your Pa had to be carried home from the sociable in a hack
the other night?” asked the grocery man, as he stood close to the stove
so 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 practice
on his chum, “It was this bouquet that got Pa into the trouble. You see
I 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 on
earth, and I would fetch up in state's prison, and then he wanted to
borrow it to wear to the sociable. He said he would have more fun than
you could shake a stick at, and I asked him if he didn't think he would
fetch up in state's prison, and he said it was different with a man. He
said when a man played a joke there was a certain dignity about it
that was lacking in a boy. So I lent it to him, and we all went to the
sociable in the basement of the church. I never see Pa more kitteny than
he was that night. He filled the bulb with ice water, and the first one
he got to smell of his button-hole bouquet was an old maid who thinks
Pa is a heathen, but she likes to be made something of by anybody that
wears pants, and when Pa sidled up to her and began talking about what a
great work the christian wimmen of the land were doing in educating
the heathen, she felt real good, and then she noticed Pa's posey in his
button-hole and she touched it, and then she reached over her beak to
smell of it. Pa he squeezed the bulb, and about half a teacupful of
water struck her right in the nose, and some went into her strangle
place, 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 covered
with perspiration, and the paint was coming off, and they took her in
the kitchen, and she told them Pa had slapped her with a dish of ice
cream, and the wimmin told the minister and the deacons, and they went
to Pa for a nexplanation, and Pa told them it was not so, and the
minister 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, and
box, 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 clean
out the whole shebang, and began to pull off his coat, when they
bundled him out doors, and Ma got mad to see Pa abused, and she left the
sociable, and I had to stay and eat ice cream and things for the whole
family. Pa says that settles it with him. He says they haven't got any
more christian charity in that church than they have in a tannery. His
eyes are just getting over being black from the sparring lessons, and
now he has got to go through oysters and beef-steak cure again. He says
it is all owing to me.”
“Well, what has all this got to do with your putting up signs in front
of my store, 'Rotten Eggs,' and 'Frowy Butter a specialty,' said the
grocery man as he took the boy by the ear and pulled him around. You
have 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 you
pulled. 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 of
the grocery cat that was sleeping on the cover to the sugar barrel he
said:
“If I was a provision pirate that never sold anything but what was
spoiled so it couldn't be sold in a first class store, who cheated in
weights and measures, who bought only wormy figs and decayed cod-fish,
who got his butter from a fat rendering establishment, his cider from
a vinegar factory, and his sugar from a glucose factory, I would not
insult the son of one of the finest families. Why, sir, I could go out
on the corner, and when I saw customers coming here, I could tell a
story that would turn their stomachs, and send them to the grocery on
the next corner. Suppose I should tell them that the cat sleeps in the
dried apple barrel, that the mice made nests in the prune box, and rats
run riot through the raisins, and that you never wash your hands except
on Decoration day and Christmas, that you wipe your nose on your shirt
sleeves, and that you have the itch, do you think your business would be
improved? Suppose I should tell the customers that you buy sour kraut of
a wood-en-shoed Polacker, who makes it of pieces of cabbage that he gets
by gathering swill, and sell that stuff to respectable people, could
you pay your rent? If I should tell them that you put lozengers in the
collection plate at church, and charge the minister forty cents a pound
for 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 bad
boy was one of the best little fellows in this town, and the boy went
out and hung up a sign in front:--
GIRL WANTED
TO COOK