DRINKING CIDER IN THE CELLAR--THE DEACON WILL NOT ACCEPT
HENNERY'S RESIGNATION--HE WANTS BUTTER ON HIS PANCAKES--HIS
CHUM JOINS HIM--THE SKUNK IN THE CELLAR--THE POOR BOY GETS
THE “AGER.”
“Well, I swow, here comes a walking hospital,” said the grocery man as
the bad boy's shadow came in the store, followed by the boy, who looked
sick and yellow, and tired, and he had lost half his flesh. “What's
the matter with you? Haven't got the yellow fever, have you?” and the
grocery man placed a chair where the invalid could fall into it.
“No, got the ager,” said the boy as he wiped the perspiration off his
upper lip, and looked around the store to see if there was anything in
sight that would take the taste of quinine out of his mouth. “Had too
much dreamy life of ease on the farm, and been shaking ever since. Darn
a farm anyway.”
“What, you haven't been to work for the deacon any more, have you? I
thought you sent in your resignation;” and the grocery man offered the
boy some limberger cheese to strengthen him.
“O, take that cheese away,” said the boy, as he turned pale and gagged.
“You don't know what a sick person needs any more than a professional
nurse. What I want is to be petted. You see I went out to the farm with
my chum, and I took the fish-poles and remained in the woods while he
drove the horse to the deacon's; and he gave the deacon my resignation,
and the deacon wouldn't accept it. He said he would hold my resignation
until after harvest, and then act on it. He said he could put me in jail
for breach of promise, if I quit work and left him without giving proper
notice; and my chum came and told me, and so I concluded to go to work
rather than have any trouble, and the deacon said my chum could work a
few days for his board if he wanted to. It was pretty darn poor board
for a boy to work for, but my chum wanted to be with me, so he stayed.
Pa and Ma came out to the farm to stay a day or two to help. Pa was
going to help harvest, and Ma was going to help the deacon's wife, but
Pa wanted to carry the jug to the field, and lay under a tree while the
rest of us worked, and Ma just talked the arm off the deacon's wife. The
deacon and Pa laid in the shade and see my chum and me work, and Ma and
the deacon's wife gossipped so they forgot to get dinner, and my chum
and me organized a strike, but we were beaten by monopoly. Pa took me by
the neck and thrashed out a shock of wheat with my heels, and the deacon
took my chum and sat down on him, and we begged and they gave us our old
situations back. But we got even with them that night. I tell you, when
a boy tries to be good, and quit playing jokes on people, and then has
everybody down on him, and has his Pa hire him out on a farm to work for
a deacon that hasn't got any soul except when he is in church, and a boy
has to get up in the night to get breakfast and go to work, and has to
work until late at night, and they kick because he wants to put butter
on his pancakes, and feed him skim milk and rusty fat pork, it makes him
tough, and he would play a joke on his aged grandmother. After my chum
and me had got all the chores done that night, we sat out on a fence
back of the house in the orchard, eating green apples in the moonlight,
and trying to think of a plan of revenge. Just then I saw a skunk back
of the house, right by the outside cellar door, and I told my chum that
it would serve them right to drive the skunk down cellar and shut the
door, but my chum said that would be too mean. I asked him if it would
be any meaner than for the deacon to snatch us baldheaded because we
couldn't mow hay away fast enough for two men to pitch it, and he said
it wouldn't, and so we got on each side of the skunk and sort of scared
it down cellar, and then we crept up softly and closed the cellar doors.
Then we went in the house and I whispered to Ma and asked her if she
didn't think the deacon had some cider, and Ma she began to hint that
she hadn't had a good drink of cider since last winter, and the deacon's
wife said us boys could take a pitcher and go down cellar and draw some.
That was too much. I didn't want any cider, anyway, so I told them that
I belonged to a temperance society, and I should break my pledge if I
drawed cider, and she said I was a good boy, for me never to touch a drop
of cider. Then she told my chum where the cider barrel was, down cellar;
but he ain't no slouch. He said he was afraid to go down cellar in the
dark, and so Pa said he and the deacon would go down and draw the cider,
and the deacon's wife asked Ma to go down too, and look at the fruit
and berries she had canned for winter, and they all went down cellar. Pa
carried an old tin lantern with holes in it, to light the deacon to the
cider barrel; and the deacon's wife had a taller candle to show Ma the
canned fruit. I tried to get Ma not to go, cause Ma is a friend of mine,
and I didn't want her to have anything to do with the circus; but she
said she guessed she knew her business. When anybody says they guess
they know their own business, that settles it with me, and I don't try
to argue with them. Well, my chum and me sat there in the kitchen, and
I stuffed a piece of red table cloth in my mouth to keep from laughing,
and my chum held his nose with his finger and thumb, so he wouldn't
snort right out. We could hear the cider run in the pitcher, and then it
stopped, and the deacon drank out of the pitcher, and then Pa did, and
then they drawed some more cider, and Ma and the deacon's wife were
talking about how much sugar it took to can fruit, and the deacon told
Pa to help himself out of a crock of fried cakes, and I heard the cover
on the crock rattle, and just then I heard the old tin lantern rattle on
the brick floor of the cellar, the deacon said 'Merciful goodness;'
Pa said 'Helen damnation, I am stabbed;' and Ma yelled 'goodness sakes
alive;' and then there was a lot of dishpans on the stairs begun to
fall, and they all tried to get up cellar at once, and they fell over
each other; and O, my, what a frowy smell came up to the kitchen from
the cellar. It was enough to kill anybody. Pa was the first to get to
the head of the stairs, and he stuck his head in the kitchen, and drew a
long breath, and said '_whoosh!_ Hennery, your Pa is a mighty sick man.'
The deacon came up next, and he had run his head into a hanging shelf
and broken a glass jar of huckleberries, and they were all over him,
and he said 'give me air. Earth's but a desert drear.' Then Ma and the
deacon's wife came up on a gallop, and they looked tired. Pa began to
peel off his coat and vest and said he was going out to bury them, and
Ma said he could bury her, too, and I asked the deacon if he didn't
notice a faint odor of sewer gas coming from the cellar, and my chum
said it smelled more to him as though something had crawled in the
cellar and died. Well, you never saw a sicker crowd, and I felt sorry
for Ma and the deacon, 'cause their false teeth fell out, and I knew Ma
couldn't gossip and the deacon couldn't talk sassy without teeth. But
you'd a dide to see Pa. He was mad, and thought the deacon had put up
the job on him, and he was going to knock the deacon out in two rounds,
when Ma said there was no use of getting mad about a dispensation of
providence, and Pa said one more such dispensation of providence would
just kill him on the spot. They finally got the house aired, and my chum
and me slept on the hay in the barn, after we had opened the outside
cellar door so the animal could get out, and the next morning I had the
fever and ague, and Pa and Ma brought me home, and I have been firing
quinine down my neck ever since. Pa says it is malaria, but it is
getting up before daylight in the morning and prowling around a farm
doing chores before it is time to do chores, and I don't want any more
farm. I thought at Sunday school last Sunday, when the superintendent
talked about the odor of sanctity that pervaded the house on that
beautiful morning, and looked at the deacon, that the deacon thought
the superintendent was referring to him and Pa, but may be it was an
accident. Well, I must go home and shoot another charge of quinine into
me,” and the boy went out as if he was on his last legs, though he acted
as if he was going to have a little fun while he did last.