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, as
he 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 that
he was liable to be sold. “If you will help me to catch the villain who
hangs up those disreputable signs in front of my store, I will. What is
it?”
“I want you to lick this stamp and put it on this letter. It is to my
girl, and I want to fool her,” and the boy handed over the letter and
stamp, and while the grocery man was licking it and putting it on, the
boy filled his pockets with dried peaches out of a box.
“There, that's a small job,” said the grocery man, as he pressed the
stamp on the letter with his thumb and handed it back. “But how are you
going to fool her?”
“That's just business,” said the boy, as he held the letter to his nose
and smelled of the stamp. “That will make her tired. You see, every time
she gets a letter from me she kisses the stamp, because she thinks
I licked it. When she kisses this stamp and gets the fumes of plug
tobacco, and stale beer, and limburg cheese, and mouldy potatoes, it
will knock her down, and then she will ask me what ailed the stamp, and
I 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 you
know, you smell like a glue factory. Gosh I can smell you all over the
store, Don't you smell anything that smells spoiled?” The grocery man
thought he did smell something that was rancid, and he looked around the
stove and finally kicked the boy's boot off the stove and said, “It's
your boots burning. Gracious, open the door. It smells like a hot box
on 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 the
conversation:
“Yes, Pa says that last oleomargarine I got here is nothing but axle
grease. Why don't you put your axle grease in a different kind of a
package? The only way you can tell axle grease from oleomargarine is
in spreading it on pancakes. Pa says axle grease will spread, but your
alleged 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, without
buying anything, and the grocery man took a dried codfish by the tail
and went up to the boy and took him by the neck. “Golblast you, I have
a notion to kill you. You have driven away more custom from this store
than your neck is worth. Now you git,” and he struck the boy across the
back with the codfish.
“That's just the way with you all,” says the boy, as he put his sleeve
up 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 him
with a codfish. Since Pa drove me out of the house, and told me to go
shirk for my living, I haven't had a kind word from anybody. My chum's
dog won't even follow me, and when a fellow gets so low down that a dog
goes back on him there is nothing left for him to do but to loaf around
a grocery, or sit on a jury, and I am too young to sit on a jury, though
I know more than some of the beats that lay around the court to get on a
jury. I am going to drown myself, and my death will be laid to you. They
will find evidences of codfish on my clothing, and you will be arrested
for driving me to a suicide's grave. Good-bye. I forgive you,” and the
boy started for the door.
“Hold on here,” says the grocery man, feeling that he had been too
harsh, “Come back here and have some maple sugar. What did your Pa drive
you away from home for?”
“O, it was on account of St. Patrick's Day,” said the bad boy as he bit
off half a pound of maple sugar, and dried his tears. “You see, Pa never
sees Ma buy a new silk handkerchief, but he wants it. Tother day Ma got
one of these orange-colored handkerchiefs, and Pa immediately had a
sore throat and wanted to wear it, and Ma let him put it on. I thought
I would break him of taking everything nice that Ma got, so when he went
down town with the orange handkerchief on his neck, I told some of the
St. Patrick boys in the Third ward, who had green ribbons on, that the
old duffer that was putting on style was an orange-man, and he said he
could 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 another
pulled the yellow handkerchief off his neck, and they all yelled 'hang
him,' and one grabbed a rope that was on the sidewalk where they were
moving 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 murder
him, and they had mauled him and stolen his yellow handkerchief. The
policeman told Pa his life was not safe, and he better go home and lock
himself in, and he did, and I was telling Ma about how I got the boys to
scare Pa, and he heard it, and he told me that settled it. He said I had
caused him to run more foot races than any champion pedestrian, and had
made his life unbearable, and now I must go it alone. Now I want you
to send a couple of pounds of crackers over to the house, and have your
boy tell the hired girl that I have gone down to the river to drown
myself, and she will tell Ma, and Ma will tell Pa, and pretty soon you
will see a bald headed pussy man whooping it up towards the river with
a rope. They may think at times that I am a little tough, but when it
comes to parting forever, they weaken.
“Well, the teacher at school says you are a hardened infidel,” said the
grocery man, as he charged the crackers to the boy's Pa. “He says he
had to turn you out to keep you from ruining the morals of the other
scholars. 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 or
statesman, so I learned one of Bob Ingersoll's speeches. Well, you'd a
dide to see the teacher and the school committee, when I started in on
Bob Ingersoll's lecture, the one that was in the papers when Bob was
here. You see I thought if a newspaper that all the pious folks takes
in their families, could publish Ingersoll's speech, it wouldn't do any
hurt for a poor little boy, who ain't knee high to a giraffe, to speak
it 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 the
election, the teacher said Bob was the smartest man this country ever
produced. I heard him say that in a corcus, when he went bumming around
the 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 mean
in 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 if
I didn't know any other piece to speak, and I told them I knew one of
Beecher's, and they let me go ahead, but it was one of Beecher's new
ones where he said he didn't believe in any hell, and afore I got warmed
up they said that was enough of that, and I had to wind up on “Mary had
a Little Lam.” None of them didn't kick on Mary's Lam and I went through
it, and they let me go home. That's about the safest thing a boy can
speak in school, now days, either “Mary had a Little Lam,” or “Twinkle,
Twinkle Little Star.” That's about up to the average intelleck of the
committee. But if a boy tries to branch out as a statesman, they choke
him off. Well, I am going down to the river, and I will leave my coat
and hat by the wood yard, and get behind the wood, and you steer Pa down
there and you will see some tall weeping over them clothes, and maybe Pa
will jump in after me, and then I will come out from behind the wood
and throw in a board for him to swim ashore on. Good bye. Give my pocket
comb to my chum,” and the boy went out and hung up a sign in front of
the grocery, as follows:
POP CORN THAT THE CAT
HAS SLEPT IN, CHEAP FOR
POP CORN BALLS FOR SOCIABLES.