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 with
you?” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came into the grocery
on crutches, with one arm in a sling, one eye blackened, and a strip of
court plaster across his face “Where was the explosion, or have you
been in a fight, or has your Pa been giving you what you deserve, with a
club? 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 somebody
a liar. What's the matter?” and the grocery man took the crutches and
stood them up against the show case.
“O, there's not much the matter with me,” said the boy, in a voice that
sounded all broke up, as he took a big apple off a basket, and began
peeling it with his upper front teeth. “If you think I am a wreck, you
ought 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 to
stop 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 commit
a crime yet, and go to state prison. What was the fuss about?” and the
grocery man laid the hatchet out of the boy's reach for fear he would
get excited and kill him.
“O, I want no fuss, it was in the way of business. You see the livery
man that I was working for promoted me. He let me drive a horse to haul
sawdust for bedding, first, and when he found I was real careful he let
me drive an express wagon to haul trunks. Day before yesterday, I think
it was--yes, I was in bed all day yesterday--day before yesterday
there was a funeral, and our stable furnished the outfit. It was only a
common, eleven dollar funeral, so they let me go to drive the horse for
the minister--you know, the buggy that goes ahead of the hearse. They
gave me an old horse that is thirty years old, that has not been off of
a 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 to
pace 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 hauling
sawdust, and gave him a loose rein. When we got off of the pavement, the
fellow that drives the hearse, he was in a hurry, 'cause his folks was
going to have ducks for dinner, and he wanted to get back, so he kept
driving along side of my buggy, and telling me to hurry up. I wouldn't
do it, 'cause the livery man told me to walk the horse. Then the
minister, he got nervous, and said he didn't know as there was any use
of going so slow, because he wanted to get back in time to get his lunch
and go to a minister's meeting in the afternoon, but I told him we would
all get to the cemetery soon enough if we took it cool, and as for me
I wasn't in no sweat. Then one of the drivers that was driving the
mourners, he came up and said he had to get back in time to run a
wedding 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 the
hand 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 we
didn't get back till the next day. Well, the minister said, in his
regular Sunday school way, 'My little man, let me take hold of the
lines,' and like a darn fool I gave them to him. He slapped the old
horse on the crupper with the lines, and then jerked up, and the old
horse stuck up his off ear, and then the hearse driver told the minister
to pull hard and saw on the bit a little, and the old horse would wake
up. The hearse driver used to drive the old pacer on the track, and he
knew what he wanted. The minister took off his black kid gloves and put
his 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 move
along sort of sideways, like a hog going to war, and the minister pulled
some more, and the hearse driver, who was right behind, he said, so
you could hear him clear to Waukesha, 'Ye-e-up,' and the old horse kept
going faster, then the minister thought the procession was getting too
quick, and he pulled harder, and yelled 'who-a' and that made the old
horse worse, and I looked through the little window in the buggy top.
behind, and the hearse was about two blocks behind, and the driver was
laughing, and the minister he got pale and said, 'My little man I guess
you better drive,' and I said 'Not much Mary Ann, you wouldn't let me
run this funeral the way I wanted to, and now you can boss it, if you
will let me get out,' but there was a street car ahead and all of a
sudden there was an earthquake, and when I come to there were about six
hundred people pouring water down my neck, and the hearse was hitched to
the fence, and the hearse driver was asking if my leg was broke, and a
policeman was fanning the minister with a plug hat that looked as though
it had been struck by a pile driver, and some people were hauling our
buggy into the gutter, and some men were trying to take old pacer out of
the 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 funnel
shaped brown paper for a servant girl. “What did the minister say when
he come to?”
“Say! What could he say? He just yelled 'whoa,' and kept sawing with his
hands, as though he was driving. I heard that the policeman was going to
pull him for fast driving, till he found it was an accident. They told
me, when they carried me home in a hack, that it was a wonder everybody
was not killed, and when I got home Pa was going to sass me, until the
hearse driver told him it was the minister that was to blame. I want to
find out if they got the minister's umbrella back. The last I see of it
the umbrella was running up his trouser's leg, and the point come out
by 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 go
to work to-morrow, 'cause the livery man says I was the only one in the
crowd that had any sense. I understand the minister is going to take a
vacation on account of his liver and nervous prostration. I would if I
was him. I never saw a man that had nervous prostration any more than he
did when they fished him out of the barbed wire fence, after we struck
the street car. But that settles the minister business with me. I don't
drive for no more preachers. What I want is a quiet party that wants
to go on a walk,” and the boy got up and hopped on one foot towards his
crutcher, filling his pistol pocket with fig he hobbled along.
“Well, sir,” said the grocery man, as he took a chew of tobacco out of
a pail, and offered some to the boy, knowing that was the only thing
in the store the boy would not take, “Do you know I think some of these
ministers 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 any
difference if the pacer was hundred years old, he _would_ pace if he was
jerked on.”
“You bet,” said the boy, as he put his crutches under his arms, and
started for the door. “A minister may be sound on the Atonement, but
he don't want to saw on an old pacer. He may have the subject of infant
baptism down finer than a cambric needle, but if he has ever been to
college, he ought to have learned enough not to say '_ye up_' to an old
pacer that has been the boss of the road in his time. A minister may be
endowed with sublime power to draw sinners to repentance, and make them
feel like getting up and dusting for the beautiful beyond, and cause
them, by his eloquence, to see angles bright and fair in their dreams,
and chariots of fire flying through the pearly gates and down the golden
streets of New Jerusalem, but he wants to turn out for a street car
all the same, when he is driving a 2:20 pacer. The next time I drive a
minister to a funeral, he will walk,” and the boy hobbled out and hung
out a sign in front of the grocery:
SMOKED DOG FISH AT HALIBUT PRICES,
GOOD ENOUGH
FOR COMPANY.