"What was the health officer doing over to your house this morning?" said
the grocery man to the bad boy, as the youth was firing frozen potatoes at
the man who collects garbage in the alley.
"O, they are searching for sewer gas and such things, and they have got
plumbers and other society experts till you can't rest, and I came away
for fear they would find the sewer gas and warm my jacket. Say, do you
think it is right when anything smells awfully, to always lay it to a
boy?"
"Well, in nine cases out of ten they would hit it right, but what do you
think is the trouble over to your house, honest?"
"S-h-h! Now don't breathe a word of it to a living soul, or I am a dead
boy. You see I was over to the dairy fair at the Exposition building
Saturday night, and when they were breaking up me and my chum helped to
carry boxes of cheese and firkins of butter, and a cheese man gave each of
us a piece of limberger cheese, wrapped up in tin foil. Sunday morning I
opened my piece, and it made me tired. O, it was the offulest smell I ever
heard of, except the smell when they found a tramp who hung himself in the
woods on the Whitefish Bay road, and had been dead three weeks. It was
just like an old back number funeral. Pa and Ma were just getting ready to
go to church, and I cut off a piece of cheese and put it in the inside
pocket of Pa's vest, and I put another in the lining of Ma's muff, and
they went to church. I went down to church too, and sat on a back seat
with my chum, looking just as pious as though I was taking up a
collection. The church was pretty warm, and by the time they got up to
sing the first hymn Pa's cheese began to smell a match against
Ma's cheese. Pa held one side of the hymn book and Ma held the other, and
Pa he always sings for all that is out, and when he braced himself and
sang 'Just as I am,' Ma thought Pa's voice was tinctured a little with
biliousness, and she looked at him and hunched him, and told him to stop
singing and breathe through his nose, cause his breath was enough to stop
a clock. Pa stopped singing and turned around kind of cross towards Ma,
and then he smelled Ma's cheese and he turned his head the other way and
said, 'whew,' and they didn't sing any more, but they looked at each other
as though they smelled frowy. When they sat down they sat as far apart as
they could get, and Pa sat next to a woman who used to be a nurse in a
hospital, and when she smelled Pa's cheese she looked at him as though she
thought he had the small pox, and she held her handkerchief to her nose.
The man in the other end of the pew, that Ma sat near, he was a stranger
from Racine, who belongs to our church, and he looked at Ma sort of queer,
and after the minister prayed, and they got up to sing again, the man took
his hat and went out, and when he came by me he said something in a
whisper about a female glue factory.
[Illustration: "JUST AS I AM."]
"Well, sir, before the sermon was over everybody in that part of the
church had their handkerchiefs to their noses, and they looked at Pa and
Ma scandalous, and the two ushers they came around in the pews looking for
a dog, and when the minister got over his sermon, and wiped the
prespiration off his face, he said he would like to have the trustees of
the church stay after meeting, as there was some business of importance to
transact. He said the question of proper ventilation and sewerage for the
church would be brought up, and that he presumed the congregation had
noticed this morning that the church was unusually full of sewer gas. He
said he had spoken of the matter before, and expected it would be attended
to before this. He said he was a meek and humble follower of the lamb, and
was willing to cast his lot wherever the Master decided, but he would be
blessed if he would preach any longer in a church that smelled like a bone
boiling establishment. He said religion was a good thing, but no person
could enjoy religion as well in a fat rendering establishment as he could
in a flower garden, and as far as he was concerned he had got enough.
Everybody looked at everybody else, and Pa looked at Ma as though he knew
where the sewer gas came from, and Ma looked at Pa real mad, and me and my
chum lit out, and I went home and distributed my cheese all around. I put
a slice in Ma's bureau drawer, down under her underclothes, and a piece in
the spare room, under the bed, and a piece in the bath-room in the soap
dish, and a slice in the album on the parlor table, and a piece in the
library in a book, and I went to the dining room and put some under the
table, and dropped a piece under the range in the kitchen. I tell you the
house was loaded for bear. Ma came home from church first, and when I
asked where Pa was, she said she hoped he had gone to walk around the
block to air hisself. Pa came home to dinner and when he got a smell of
the house he opened all the doors, and Ma put a comfortable around her
shoulders, and told Pa he was a disgrace to civilization. She tried to get
Pa to drink some carbolic acid. Pa finally convinced Ma that it was not
him, and then they decided it was the house that smelled so, as well as
the church, and all Sunday afternoon they went visiting, and this morning
Pa went down to the health office and got the inspector of nuisances to
come up to the house, and when he smelled around a spell he said there was
dead rats in the main sewer pipe, and they sent for plumbers, and Ma went
out to a neighbors to borry some fresh air, and when the plumbers began to
dig up the floor in the basement I came over here. If they find any of
that limberger cheese it will go hard with me. The hired girls have both
quit, and Ma says she is going to break up keeping house and board. That
is just into my hand. I want to board at a hotel, where you can have a
bill-of-fare, and tooth picks, and billiards, and everything. Well I guess
I will go over to the house and stand in the back door and listen to the
mocking bird. If you see me come flying out of the alley with my coat tail
full of boots you can bet they have discovered the sewer gas."