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 the
grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the store one evening to buy a
stick of striped pepperment candy for the baby, while his Pa stopped
the baby wagon out on the sidewalk and waited for the boy, with an
expression 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 in
after putting the candy in the baby's hand. “You see, Uncle Ezra came
back from Chicago, where he had been to sell some cheese, and he stopped
over a couple of days with us, and he said we must play one more joke
on 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 time
I go into any joke on shares. If I play any more jokes I don't want any
old Uncle to give me away.”
“What is it?” said the grocery man, as he took a stool and sat out
by the front door beside the boy who was trying to eat a box of red
raspberries on the sly.
“Well Uncle Ezra and me bribed the nurse girl to dress the baby up one
evening in some old, dirty baby clothes, belonging to our wash woman's
baby, and we put it in a basket and placed the basket on the front door
step, and put a note in the basket and addressed it to Pa. We had
the nurse girl stay out in front, by the basement stairs, so the baby
couldn't get away and she rung the bell and got behind something. Ma and
Pa, 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 set
it down, and told Pa there was a note in it for him. Ma, she came up
and looked at the note as Pa tore it open, and Uncle Ezra looked in the
basket 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 a
girl'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 she
said 'retch,' to Pa, just as the actresses do on the stage, and put her
handkerchief 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 I
looked in the basket, 'Pa, it looks just like you, and I'll leave it to
Ma.' That was too much, and Pa got mad in a minute. He always gets mad
at me. But he went up and looked in the basket, and he said it was some
Dutch baby, and was evidently from the lower strata of society, and the
unnatural 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 to
its irregular features, that made Ma mad, and she took it up out of the
basket and told Pa it was a perfect picture of him, and tried to put it
in Pa's arms, but he wouldn't have it, and said he would call the police
and have it taken to the poor house. Uncle Ezra took Pa in a corner
and told him the best thing he could do would be to see 'Almira' and
compromise with her, and that made Pa mad, and he was going to hit uncle
Ezra with a chair. Pa was perfectly wild, and if he had a gun I guess he
would have shot all of us. Ma took the baby up stairs and had the girl
put it to bed, and after Pa got mad enough Uncle Ezra told him it was
all a joke, and it was his own baby, that we had put in the basket, and
then he was madder than ever, and he told Uncle Ezra never to darken his
door again. I don't how know he made up with Ma for calling it a dutch
baby from the Polack settlement, but anyway, he wheels it around every
day, 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 that
wasn'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 never
played wicked jokes on blind people as Pa did when he was a boy. Uncle
Ezra 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 the
hotel where Pa tended bar. Another thing I never sold rum, either, as
Pa did. Well, before the blind vocalists went to bed Pa caught a lot of
frogs and put them in the beds where the girls were to sleep, and when
the poor blind girls got into bed the frogs hopped over them, and the
way they got out was a caution. It is bad enough to have frogs hopping
all over girls that can see, but for girls that are deprived of their
sight, and don't know what anything is, except by the feeling of it, it
looks to me like a pretty tough joke. I guess Pa is sorry now for what
he did, 'cause when Uncle Ezra told the frog story, I brought home a
frog 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 of
him. Before bedtime I turned the conversation onto paralysis, and
told about a man about Pa's age having it on the West side, and Pa
was nervous, and soon after he retired I guess the frog wanted to get
acquainted with Pa, 'cause he yelled six kinds of murder, and we went
into his room. You know how cold a frog is? Well, you'd a dide to see
Pa. He laid still, and said his end had come, and Uncle Ezra asked
him if it was the end with the head on, or the feet, and Pa told him
paralysis had marked him for a victim, and he could feel that his left
leg was becoming dead. He said he could feel the cold, clammy hand of
death walking up him, and he wanted Ma to put a bottle of hot water to
his feet. Ma got the bottle of hot water and put it to Pa's feet, and
the cork came out and Pa said he was dead, sure enough, now, because he
was 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 thought
she 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 time
to stop the circus, and I reached up Ma's lace sleeve and caught the
frog by the leg and pulled it out, and told Pa I guessed he had taken my
frog 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 boy
that would do such a thing would go to hell as sure as preachin' and
I asked him if he thought a man who put frogs in the beds with blind
girls, when he was a boy, would get to heaven, and then he told me to
lite out, and I lit. I guess Pa will feel better when Uncle Ezra goes
away, 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 I
take the baby wagon, and tell him you don't know how he would get along
without such a nice boy as me, and you can charge it in our next months'
bill.”