"I understand your Pa has got to drinking again like a fish," says the
grocery man to the bad boy, as the youth came in the grocery and took a
handful of dried apples. The boy ate a dried apple and then made up a
terrible face, and the grocery man asked him what he was trying to do with
his face. The boy caught his breath and then said:
"Say, don't you know any better than to keep dried apples where a boy can
get hold of them when he has got the mumps? You will kill some boy yet by
such dum carelessness. I thought these were sweet dried apples, but they
are sour as a boarding house keeper, and they make me tired. Didn't you
ever have the mumps? Gosh, but don't it hurt though? You have got to be
darn careful when you have the mumps, and not go out bob-sledding, or
skating, or you will have your neck swell up biggern a milk pail. Pa says
he had the mumps once when he was a boy and it broke him all up."
"Well, never mind the mumps, how about your Pa spreeing it. Try one of
those pickles in the jar there, won't you. I always like to have a boy
enjoy himself when he comes to see me," said the grocery man, winking to a
man who was filling an old fashioned tin box with tobacco out of the pail,
who winked back as much as to say, "if that boy eats a pickle on top of
them mumps we will have a circus, sure."
"You can't play no pickle on me, not when I have the mumps. Ma passed the
pickles to me this morning, and I took one mouthful, and like to had the
lockjaw. But Ma didn't do it on purpose, I guess. She never had the mumps
and didn't know how discouraging a pickle is. Darn if I didn't feel as
though I had been struck in the butt of the ear with a brick. But
about Pa. He has been fuller'n a goose ever since New Year's day. I think
its wrong for women to tempt feeble minded persons with liquor on New
Year's. Now me and my chum, we can take a drink and then let it alone. We
have got brain, and know when we have got enough, but Pa, when he gets to
going don't ever stop until he gets so sick that he can't keep his
stummick inside of hisself. It is getting so they look to me to brace Pa
up every time he gets on a tear, and I guess I fixed him this time so he
will never touch liquor again. I scared him so his bald head turned gray
in a single night."
"What under the heavens have you done to him now?" says the grocery man,
in astonishment. "I hope you haven't done anything you will regret in
after years."
"Regret nothing," said the boy, as he turned the lid of the cheese box
back and took the knife and sliced off a piece of cheese, and took a few
crackers out of a barrel, and sat down on a soap box by the stove, "You
see Ma was annoyed to death with Pa. He would come home full, when she had
company, and lay down on the sofa and snore, and he would smell like a
distillery. It hurt me to see Ma cry, and I told her I would break Pa of
drinking if she would let me, and she said if I would promise not to hurt
Pa to go ahead, and I promised not to. Then I got my chum and another boy,
to help, and Pa is all right. We went down to the place where they sell
arms and legs, to folks who have served in the army, or a saw mill, or a
threshing machine, and lose their limbs, and we borrowed some arms and
legs, and fixed up a dissecting room. We fixed a long table in the
basement, big enough to lay Pa out on you know, and then we got false
whiskers and moustaches, and when Pa came in the house drunk and lay down
on the sofa, and got to sleep, we took him and laid him out on the table,
and took some trunk straps, and a circingle and strapped him down
to the table. He slept right along all through it, and we had another
table with the false arms and legs on, and we rolled up our sleeves, and
smoked pipes, just like I read that medical students do when they cut up a
man.
"Well, you'd a dide to see Pa look at us when he woke up. I saw him open
his eyes, and then we began to talk about cutting up dead men. We put
hickery nuts in our mouths so our voices would sound different, so he
wouldn't know us, and was telling the other boys about what a time we had
cutting up the last man we bought. I said he was awful tough, and when we
had got his legs off and had taken out his brain, his friends came to the
dissecting room and claimed the body, and we had to give it up, but I
saved the legs. I looked at Pa on the table and he began to turn pale, and
he squirmed around to get up, but found he was fast. I had pulled his
shirt up under his arms, while he was asleep, and as he began to move I
took an icicle, and in the dim light of the candles, that were sitting on
the table in beer botles, I drew the icicle across Pa's stummick and I
said to my chum, 'Doc, I guess we had better cut open this old duffer and
see if he died from inflamation of the stummick, from hard drinking, as
the coroner said he did.' Pa shuddered all over when he felt the icicle
going over his bare stummick, and he said, 'For God's sake, gentlemen,
what does this mean? I am not dead.'
"The other boys looked at Pa with astonishment, and I said 'Well, we
bought you for dead, and the coroner's jury said you were dead, and by the
eternal we ain't going to be fooled out of a corpse when we buy one, are
we Doc?' My chum said not if he knowed his self, and the other students
said, 'Of course he is dead. He thinks he is alive, but he died day before
yesterday, fell dead on the street, and his folks said he had been a
nuisance and they wouldn't claim the corpse, and we bought it at the
morgue.' Then I drew the icicle across him again, and I said, 'I don't
know about this, doctor. I find that blood follows the scalpel as I cut
through the cuticle. Hand me the blood sponge please.' Pa began to wiggle
around, and we looked at him, and my chum raised his eye-lid, and looked
solemn, and Pa said, 'Hold on gentlemen. Don't cut into me any more, and I
can explain this matter. This is all a mistake. I was only drunk.' We went
in a corner and whispered, and Pa kept talking all the time. He said if we
would postpone the hog killing he could send and get witnesses to prove
that he was not dead, but that he was a respectable citizen, and had a
family. After we held a consultation I went to Pa and told him that what
he said about being alive might possibly be true, though we had our
doubts. We had found such cases before in our practice east, where men
seemed to be alive, but it was only temporary. Before we had got them cut
up they were dead enough for all practical purposes. Then I laid the
icicle across Pa's abdomen, and went on to tell him that even if he _was_
alive it would be better for him to play that he _was_ dead, because he
was such a nuisance to his family that they did not want him, and I was
telling him that I had heard that in his lifetime he was very cruel to his
boy, a bright little fellow who was at the head of his class in Sunday
school and a pet wherever he was known, when Pa interrupted me and said,
'Doctor, please take that carving knife off my stomach, for it makes me
nervous. As for that boy of mine, he is the condemndest little whelp in
town, and he isn't no pet anywhere. Now, you let up on this dissectin'
business, and I will make it all right with you.' We held another
consultation and then I told Pa that we did not feel that it was doing
justice to society to give up the body of a notorious drunkard, after we
had paid twenty dollars for the corpse. If there was any hopes that he
would reform and try and lead a different life, it would be different, and
I said to the boys, 'gentlemen, we must do our duty. Doc, you dismember
that leg, and I will attend to the stomach and the upper part of body. He
will be dead before we are done with him. We must remember that society
has some claim on us, and not let our better natures be worked upon by the
_post mortem_ promises of a dead drunkard.' Then I took my icicle and
began fumbling around the abdomen portion of Pa's remains, and my chum
took a rough piece of ice and began to saw his leg off, while the other
boy took hold of the leg and said he would catch it when it dropped off.
Well, Pa kicked like a steer. He said he wanted to make one more appeal to
us, and we acted sort of impatent but we let up to hear what he had to
say. He said if we would turn him loose he would give us ten dollars more
than we paid for his body, and that he would never drink another drop as
long as he lived. Then we whispered some more and then told him we thought
favorably of his last proposition, but he must swear, with his hand on the
leg of a corpse we were then dissecting that he would never drink again,
and then he must be blindfolded and be conducted several blocks away from
the dissecting room, before we could turn him loose. He said that was all
right, and so we blindfolded him, and made him take a bloody oath, with
his hand on a piece of ice that we told him was a piece of another corpse,
and then we took him out of the house and walked him around the block four
times, and left him on a corner, after he had promised to send the money
to an address that I gave him. We told him to stand still five minutes
after we left him, then remove the blindfold, and go home. We watched him,
from behind a board fence, and he took off the handkerchief, looked at the
name on a street lamp, and found he was not far from home. He started off
saying 'That's a pretty narrow escape old man. No more whisky for you.' I
did not see him again until this morning, and when I asked him where he
was last night he shuddered and said 'none of your darn business. But I
never drink any more, you remember that.' Ma was tickled and she told me I
was worth my weight in gold. Well, good day. That cheese is musty." And
the boy went and caught on a passing sleigh.