THE OLD MAN AWFULLY BLOATED--THE OLD MAN BEGINS DRINKING
AGAIN--THINKS BETTING IS HARMLESS--HAD TO WALK HOME FROM
CHICAGO--THE SPECTACLES CHANGED--A SMALL SUIT OF CLOTHES--
THE OLD MAN AWFULLY BLOATED--“HENNERY YOUR PA IS A MIGHTY
SICK MAN”--THE SWELLING SUDDENLY GOES DOWN.
“Come in,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as the youth stood
on the steps in an uncertain sort of away, as though he did not know
whether he would be welcome or not. “I tell you, boy, I pity you. I
understand your Pa has got to drinking again. It is too bad. I can't
think of anything that humiliates a boy, and makes him so ashamed, as
to have a father that is in the habit of hoisting in too much benzine.
A boy feels as though everybody was down on him, and I don't wonder that
such boys often turn out bad. What started your Pa to drinking again?”
“O, Ma thinks it was losing money on the Chicago races. You see, Pa is
great on pointers. He don't usually bet unless he has got a sure thing,
but when he gets what they call a pointer, that is, somebody tells him a
certain horse is sure to win, because the other horses are to be pulled
back, he thinks a job has been put up, and if he thinks he is on the
inside of the ring he will bet. He says it does not do any hurt to bet,
if you win, and he argues that a man who wins lots of money can do a
great deal of good with it. But he had to walk home from the Chicago
races all the same, and he has been steaming ever since. Pa can't stand
adversity. But I guess we have got him all right now. He is the scartest
man you ever saw,” and the boy took a can opener and began to cut the
zinc under the stove, just to see if it would work as well on zinc as on
tin.
“What, you haven't been dissecting him again, have you?” said the
grocery man, as he pulled a stool up beside the boy to hear the news.
How did you bring him to his senses?”
“Well, Ma tried having the minister talk to Pa, but Pa talked
Bible, about taking a little wine for the stomach's sake, and gave
illustrations about Noah getting full, so the minister couldn't brace
him up, and then Ma had some of the sisters come and talk to him, but
he broke them all up by talking about what an appetite they had for
champagne punch when they were out in camp last summer, and they
couldn't have any affect on him, and so Ma said she guessed I would have
to exercise my ingenuity on Pa again. Ma has an idea that I have got
some sense yet, so I told her that if she would do just as I said, me
and my chum would scare Pa so he would swear off. She said she would,
and we went to work. First I took Pa's spectacles down to an optician,
Saturday night, and had the glasses taken out and a pair put in their
place that would magnify, and I took them home and put them in Pa's
spectacle case. Then I got a suit of clothes from my chum's uncle's
trunk, about half the size of Pa's clothes. My chum's uncle is a very
small man, and Pa is corpulent. I got a plug hat three sizes smaller
than Pa's hat, and the name out of Pa's hat and put it in the small hat.
I got a shirt about half big enough for Pa, and put his initials on
the thing under the bosom, and got a number fourteen collar. Pa wears
seventeen. Pa had promised to brace up and go to church Sunday morning,
and Ma put these small clothes where Pa could put them on. I told Ma,
when Pa woke up, to tell him he looked awfully bloated, and excite his
curiosity, and then send for me.”
“You didn't play such a trick as that on a poor old man, did you?” said
the grocery man, as a smile came over his face.
“You bet. Desperate diseases require desperate remedies. Well, Ma told
Pa he looked awfully bloated, and that his dissipation was killing him,
as well as all the rest of the family. Pa said he guessed he wasn't
bloated very much, but he got up and put on his spectacles and looked at
himself in the glass. You'd a dide to see him look at himself. His face
looked as big as two faces, through the glass, and his nose was a sight.
Pa looked scared, and then he held up his hand and looked at that. His
hand looked like a ham. Just then I came in, and I turned pale, with
some chalk on my face, and I begun to cry, and I said, 'O, Pa, what ails
you? You are so swelled up I hardly knew you.' Pa looked sick to his
stomach, and then he tried to get on his pants. O, my, it was all I
could do to keep from laughing to see him pull them pants on. He could
just get his legs in, and when I got a shoe horn and gave it to him, he
was mad. He said it was a mean boy that would give his Pa a shoe horn
to put on his pants with. The pants wouldn't come around Pa into ten
inches, and Pa said he must have eat something that disagreed with him,
and he laid it to watermelon. Ma stuffed her handkerchief in her mouth
to keep from laffing, when she see Pa look at his-self. The legs of the
pants were so tight Pa could hardly breathe, and he turned pale, and
said, 'Hennery, your Pa is a mighty sick man,' and then Ma and me both
laughed, and he said we wanted him to die so we could spend his life
insurance in riotous living.”
[Illustration: Hennery, your Pa is a mighty sick man 197]
“But when Pa put on that condensed shirt, Ma she laid down on the lounge
and fairly yelled, and I laughed till my side ached. Pa got it over his
head, and got his hands in the sleeves, and couldn't get it either way,
and he couldn't see us laugh, but he could hear us, and he said, 'It's
darned funny, ain't it, to have a parent swelled up this way. If I bust
you will both be sorry.' Well, Ma took hold of one side of the shirt,
and I took hold of the other, and we pulled it on, and when Pa's head
came up through the collar, his face was blue. Ma told him she was
afraid he would have a stroke of apoplexy before he got his clothes on,
and I guess Pa thought so too. He tried to get the collar on, but it
wouldn't go half way around his neck, and he looked in the glass and
cried, he looked so. He sat down in a chair and panted, he was so out
of breath, and the shirt and pants ripped, and Pa said there was no use
living if he was going to be a rival to a fat woman in the side show.
Just then I put the plug hat on Pa's head, and it was so small it was
going to roll off, when Pa tried to fit it on his head, and then he took
it off and looked inside of it, to see if it was his hat, and when he
found his name in it, he said 'Take it away. My head is all wrong too.'
Then he told me to go for the doctor, mighty quick. I got the doctor and
told him what we were trying to do with Pa, and he said he would finish
the job. So the Doc. came in, and Pa was on the lounge, and when the
Doc. saw him, he said it was lucky he was called just as he was, or we
would have required an undertaker. He put some pounded ice on Pa's head
the first thing, ordered the shirt cut open, and we got the pants off.
Then he gave Pa an emetic, and had his feet soaked, and Pa said, 'Doc.,
if you will bring me out of this I will never drink another drop.'
The Doc. told Pa that his life was not worth a button if he ever drank
again, and left about half a pint of sugar pills to be fired into Pa
every five minutes. Ma and me sat up with Pa all day Sunday, and Monday
morning I changed the spectacles, and took the clothes home, and along
about noon Pa said he felt as though he could get up. Well, you never
see a tickleder man than he was when he found the swelling had gone down
so he could get his pants and shirt on, and he says that doctor is
the best in this town. Ma says I am a smart boy, and Pa has taken the
pledge, and we are all right. Say, you don't think there is anything
wrong in a boy playing it on his Pa once in a while, do you?”
“Not much, You have very likely saved your Pa's life. No, sir, joking is
all right when by so doing you can break a person of a bad habit,” and
the grocery man cut a chew of tobacco off a piece of plug that was on
the counter, which the boy had soaked in kerosene, and before he had
fairly got it rolled in his cheek he spit it out and began to gag,
and as the boy started leisurely out the door the grocery man said,
“Lookahere, condemn you, don't you ever tamper with my tobacco again, or
by thunder I'll maul you,” and he followed the boy to the door,
spitting cotton all the way; and, as the boy went around the corner, the
groceryman thought how different a joke seemed when it was on somebody
else. And then he turned to go in and rinse the kerosene out of his
mouth, and found a sign on a box of new, green apples, as follows:--
COLIC OR CHOLERA INFANTUM
YOU PAYS YOUR MONEY
AND TAKES YOUR CHOICE.