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 the
bad boy, as he came in the store with his face black and shining, “I
don't want any colored boys around here. White boys break me up bad
enough.”
“O, philopene,” said the bad boy, as he put his hands on his knees and
laughed so the candy jars rattled on the shelves. “You didn't know me. I
am the same boy that comes in here and talks your arm off,” and the boy
opened the cheese box and cut off a piece of cheese so natural that the
grocery man had no difficulty in recognizing him.
“What in the name of the seven sleeping sisters have you got on your
hands and face,” said the grocery man, as he took the boy by the ear and
turned him around, “You would pass in a colored prayer meeting, and
no one would think you were galvanized. What you got up in such an
outlandish rig for?”
“Well, I'll tell you, if you will keep watch at the door. If you see
a bald-headed colored man coming along the street with a club, you
whistle, and I will fall down cellar. The bald-headed colored man will
be Pa. You see, we moved yesterday. Pa told me to get a vacation from
the livery stable, and we would have fun moving. But I don't want any
more fun. I know when I have got enough fun. Pa carried all the light
things, and when it came to lifting, he had a crick in the back. Gosh, I
never 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 load
over on the west side, and delivered them to a house that seemed to be
expecting a load of household furniture. He thought it was all right, if
everybody that was moving got a load of goods. Well, after we got moved
Pa said we must make a garden, and we said we would go out and spade
up the ground and sow peas, and radishes, and beets. There was some
neighbors 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 would
be a good joke to disguise ourselves as tramps, and the neighbors would
think we had hired some tramps to dig in the garden. I told Pa of a boss
scheme to fool them. I suggested that we take some of his shoe blacking
that is put on with a sponge, and black our faces, and the neighbors
would think we had hired an old colored man and his boy to work in the
garden. Pa said it was immense, and he told me to go and black up, and
if it worked he would black hisself. So I went and put this burnt cork
on my face, 'cause it would wash off, and Pa looked at me and said it
was wack, and for me to fix him up too. So I got the bottle of shoe
blacking and painted Pa so he looked like a colored coal heaver.
Actually, when Ma saw him she ordered him off the premises, and when he
laffed at her and acted sassy, she was going to throw biling water on
Pa. But I told her the scheme and she let up on Pa. O, you'd a dide to
see us out in the garden. Pa looked like uncle Tom, and I looked like
Topsy, 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 and
hit me, and I piled over the fence after him and left Pa. It was my
chum, 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 I
after him, and Pa after both of us. He chased us two blocks and then we
got behind a policeman, and my chum told the policeman it was a crazy
old colored man that wanted to kidnap us, and the policeman took Pa by
the neck and was going to club him, but Pa said he would go home and
behave. He was offul mad, and he went home and we looked through the
alley fence and saw Pa trying to wash off the blacking. You see that
blacking won't wash off. You have to wear it off. Pa would wash his face
with soap suds, and then look in the glass, and he was blacker everytime
he washed, and when Ma laffed at him he said the offulest words,
something like 'sweet spirit hear my prayer,' then he washed himself
again. I am going to leave my burnt cork on, cause if I washed it off
Pa would know there had been some smouging somewhere. I asked the shoe
store man how long it would take the blacking to wear off, and he said
it 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 the
country fishing, till mine wears off, and when I get out of town I will
wash up. Say, you don't think a little blacking hurts a man's complexion
do you, and you don't think a man ought to get mad because it won't wash
off, do you?”
“O, probably it don't hurt the complexion,” said the grocery man, as he
sprinkled some fresh water on the wilted lettuce, so it would look fresh
while 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 your
Pa has to-night. As to getting mad about it, if I was your Pa I would
take a barrel stave and shatter your castle scandalous. What kind of a
fate 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 go
off 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 would
give me a job as fireman, and I should feel bad for you every time I
chucked in a nuther chunk of brimstone, and thought of you trying to
swim dog fashion in the lake of fire, and straining your eyes to find an
iceberg that you could crawl up on to cool your parched hind legs. If I
don't die slow so I will have time to repent, and be saved, I shall be
toasted brown. That's what the minister says, and they wouldn't pay him
two thousand dollars a year and give him a vacation to tell anything
that was not so. I tell you it is painful to think of that place that
so many pretty fair average people here are going to when they die. Just
think of it, a man that swears just once, if he don't hedge, and take it
back 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 a
fellow steals a little thing like a pin, he forgets to repent, cause it
don't seem to be worth while to make so much fuss about. But if a fellow
robs a bank, or steals a whole lot of money from orphans, he knows it is
a 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 only
stole 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 read
about being good, and going to Heaven, the more I think a feller can't
be 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 crackers
and cheese, you charge it right up to Pa, and then I won't have it on my
mind and have to answer for it at the great judgment day. I am going to
shake my chum, cause he chews tobacco, which is wicked, though I don't
see how that can be, when the minister smokes, but I want to be on the
safe side. I am going to be good or bust a suspender, and hereafter you
can 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 a
terror, getting to heaven, I am the hairpin. I tell you, when I listen
to the minister tell about the angels flying around there, and I see
pictures of them purtier than any girl in this town, with chubby arms
with dimples in the elbows and shoulders, and long golden hair, and
think of myself here cleaning off horses in a livery stable and smelling
like an old harness, it makes me tired, and I wouldn't miss going there
for ten dollars. Say, you would make a healthy angel, for a back street
of the new Jerusalem, but you would give the whole crowd away unless
you 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 going
to wash up and go and help the minister move.”
As the boy went out the grocery man sat for several minutes thinking of
the change that had come over the bad boy, and wondered what had brought
it about, and then he went to the door to watch him as he wended his way
across the street with his head down, as though in deep thought, and
the grocery man said to himself, “that boy is not as bad as some people
think he is,” and then he looked around and saw a sign hanging up in
front 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.”