THE BAD BOY GROWS THOUGHTFUL--WHY IS LETTUCE LIKE A GIRL?--
KING SOLOMON A FOOL--THINK OF ANY SANE MAN HAVING A THOUSAND
WIVES--HE WOULD HAVE TO HAVE TWO HOTELS DURING VACATION--300
BLONDES--600 BRUNETTES, ETC--A THOUSAND WIVES TAKING ICE
CREAM--I DON'T ENVY SOLOMON HIS THOUSAND.
“What you sitting there like a bump on a log for?” asked the grocery man
of the bad boy, as the youth had sat on a box for half an hour, with
his hands in his pockets, looking at a hole in the floor, until his eyes
were set like a dying horse. “What you thinking of, anyway? It seems to
me boys set around and think more than they used to when I was a boy,”
and the groceryman brushed the wilted lettuce and shook it, and tried
to make it stand up stiff and crisp, before he put it out doors; but the
contrary lettuce which had been picked the day before, looked so tired
that the boy noticed it.
“That lettuce reminds me of a girl. Yesterday I was in here when it was
new, like the girl going to the picnic, and it was as fresh and proud,
and starched up, and kitteny, and full of life, and as sassy as a girl
starting out for a picnic. To-day it has got back from the picnic,
and, like the girl, the starch is all taken out, and it is limber, and
languid, and tired, and can't stand up alone, and it looks as though it
wanted to be laid at rest beside the rotten apples in the alley, rather
than be set out in front of a store to be sold to honest people, and
give them the gangrene of the liver,” and the boy put on a health
commissioner air that frightened the grocery man, and he threw the
lettuce out the back door.
“You never mind about my lettuce,” said the grocery man, “I can attend
to my affairs. But now tell me what you were thinking about here all the
morning?”
“I was thinking what a fool King Solomon was,” said the boy, with the
air of one who has made a statement that has got to be argued pretty
strong to make it hold water.
“Now, lookahere,” said the grocery man in anger, “I have stood it
to have you play tricks on me, and have listened to your condemned
foolishness without a murmur as long as you have confined yourself to
people now living, but when you attack Solomon--the wisest man, the
great king--and call him a fool, friendship ceases, and you must get
out of this store. Solomon in all his glory, is a friend of mine, and no
fool boy is going to abuse him in my presence. Now, you dry up!”
“Sit down on the ice box,” said the boy to the grocery man, “what you
need is rest. You are overworked. Your alleged brain is equal to wilted
lettuce, and it can devise ways and means to hide rotten peaches under
good ones, so as to sell them to blind orphans; but when it comes to
grasping great questions, your small brain cannot comprehend them. Your
brain may go up sideways to a great question and rub against it, but it
cannot surround it, and grasp it. That's where you are deformed. Now,
it is different with me. I can raise brain to sell to you grocery men.
Listen. This Solomon is credited with being the wisest man, and yet
history says he had a thousand wives. Just think of it. You have got one
wife, and Pa has got one, and all the neighbors have one, if they have
had any kind of luck. Does not one wife make you pay attention? Wouldn't
two wives break you up? Wouldn't three cause you to see stars? How would
ten strike you? Why, man alive, you do not grasp the magnitude of the
statement that Solomon had a thousand wives. A thousand wives, standing
side by side, would reach about four blocks. Marching by fours it would
take them twenty minutes to pass a given point. The largest summer
resort hotel only holds about five hundred people, so Sol would have had
to hire two hotels if he took his wives out for a day in the country. If
you would stop and think once in a while you would know more.”
The grocery man's eyes had begun to stick out as the bad boy continued,
as though the statistics had never been brought to his attention before,
but he was bound to stand by his old friend Solomon, and he said, “Well,
Solomon's wives must have been different from our wives of the present
day.”
“Not much,” said the boy, as he see he was paralizing the grocery man.
“Women have been about the same ever since Eve. She got mashed on the
old original dude, and it stands to reason that Solomon's wives were no
better than the mother of the human race. Statistics show that one woman
out of every ten is red headed. That would give Solomon an even hundred
red headed wives. Just that hundred red headed wives would be enough
to make an ordinary man think that there was a land that is fairer than
this. Then there would be, out of the other nine hundred, about three
hundred blondes, and the other six hundred would be brunettes, and mabe
he had a few albinos, and bearded women, and fat women, and dwarfs. Now,
those thousand women had appetites, desires for dress and style, the
same as all women. Imagine Solomon saying to them. 'Girls, lets all go
down to the ice cream, saloon and have a dish of ice cream.' Can you,
with your brain muddled with codfish and new potatoes, realize the scene
that would follow? Suppose after Solomon's broom brigade bad got seated
in the ice creamery, one of the red headed wives should catch Solomon
winking at a strange girl at another table. You may think Solomon did
not know enough to wink, or that he was not that kind of a flirt, but he
_must_ have been or he could never had succeeded in marrying a thousand
wives, in a sparcely settled country. No, Sir, it looks to me as though
Solomon in all his glory, was an old masher, and from what I have seen
of men being bossed around with one wife, I don't envy Solomon his
thousand. Why, just imagine that gang of wives going and ordering fall
bonnets. Solomon would have to be a king, or a Vanderbilt to stand it.
Ma wears five dollar silk stockings, and Pa kicks awfully when the bill
comes in. Imagine Soloman putting up for a few thousand pair of silk
stockings. I am glad you will sit down and reason with me in a rational
way about some of these Bible stories that take my breath away. The
minister stands me off when I try to talk with him about such things,
and tells me to study the parable of the Prodigal Son, and the deacons
tell me to go and soak my head. There is darn little encouragement for a
boy to try and figure out things. How would you like to have a thousand
red headed wives come into the store this minute and tell you they
wanted you to send carriages around to the house at 3 o'clock so they
could go for a drive? Or how would you like to have a hired girl come
rushing in and tell you to send up six hundred doctors, because six
hundred of your wives had been taken with cholera morbus? Or--”
“O, don't mention it,” said the grocery man, with a shudder. “I wouldn't
take Solomon's place, and be the natural protector of a thousand wives
if anybody would give me the earth. Think of getting up in a cold winter
morning and building a thousand fires. Think of two thousand pair of
hands in a fellow's hair! Boy, you have shown me that Solomon needed a
guardian over him. He didn't have sense.”
“Yes,” says the boy, “and think of two thousand feet, each one as cold
as a brick of chocolate ice cream. A man would want a back as big as the
fence of a fair ground. But I don't want to harrow up your feelings. I
must go and put some arnica on Pa. He has got home, and says he has been
to a summer resort on a vacation, and he is all covered with blotches.
He says it is mosquito bites, but Ma thinks he has been shot full of
bird shot by some water melon farmer. Ma hasn't got any sympathy for Pa
because he didn't take her along, but if she had been there she would
have been filled with bird shot, too. But you musn't detain me. Between
Pa and the baby I have got all I can attend to. The baby is teething,
and Ma makes me put my fingers in the baby's mouth to help it cut teeth.
That is a humiliating position for a boy as big as I am. Say, how many
babies do you figure that Solomon had to buy rubber toothing rings for
in all his glory?”
And the boy went out leaving the grocery man reflecting on what a family
Solomon must have had, and how he needed to be the wisest man to get
along without a circus afternoon and evening.