"Don't you think my Pa is showing his age a good deal more than usual?"
asked the bad boy of the grocery man, as he took a smoked herring out of a
box, and peeled off the skin with a broken bladed jack-knife, and split it
open and ripped off the bone, threw the head at a cat, took some crackers
and began to eat.
"Well, I don't know but he does look as though he was getting old," said
the grocery man, as he took a piece of yellow wrapping paper and charged
the boy's poor old father with a dozen herrings and a pound of crackers;
"But there is no wonder he is getting old. I wouldn't go through what your
father has, the last year, for a million dollars. I tell you, boy, when
your father is dead, and you get a step-father, and he makes you walk the
chalk mark, you will realize what a bonanza you have fooled yourself out
of by killing off your father. The way I figure it, your father will last
about six months, and you ought to treat him right, the little time he has
to live."
"Well, I am going to," said the boy, as he picked the herring bones out of
his teeth with a piece of a match that he sharpened with his knife. "But I
don't believe in borrowing trouble about a step-father so long before
hand. I don't think Ma could get a man to step into Pa's shoes, as long as
I lived, not if she was inlaid with diamonds, and owned a brewery. There
are brave men, I know, that are on the marry, but none of them would want
to be brevet father to a cherubim like me, except he got pretty good
wages. And then, since Pa was dissected he is going to lead a different
life, and I guess I will make a man of him, if he holds out. We got him to
join the Good Templars last night."
"No, you don't tell me," said the grocery man, as he thought that
his trade in cider for mince pies would be cut off. "So you got him into
the Good Templars, eh?"
"Well, he thinks he has joined the Good Templars, so it is all the same.
You see my chum and me have been going to a private gymnasium, on the west
side, kept by a Dutchman, and in the back room he has all the tools for
getting up muscle. There, look at my arm," said the boy, as he rolled up
his sleeve and showed a muscle about as big as an oyster. "That is the
result of training at the gymnasium. Before I took lessons I hadn't any
more muscle than you have got. Well, the Dutchman was going to a dance on
the south side the other night, and he asked my chum to tend the
gymnasium, and I told Pa if he would join the Good Templars that night
there wouldn't be many at the lodge, and he wouldn't be so embarrassed,
and as I was one of the officers of the lodge I would put it to him light,
and he said he would go, so my chum got five other boys to help us put him
through. So we steered him down to the gymnasium and made him rap on the
storm door outside, and I said 'who comes there?' and he said it was a
pilgrim who wanted to jine our sublime order. I asked him if he had made
up his mind to turn from the ways of a hyena, and adopt the customs of the
truly good, and he said if he knew his own heart he had, and then I told
him to come in out of the snow and take off his pants. He kicked a little
at taking off his pants, because it was cold out there in the storm door
dog house, but I told him they all had to do it. The princes, potentates
and paupers all had to come to it. He asked me how it was when we
initiated women, and I told him women never took that degree. He pulled
off his pants and wanted a check for them, but I told him the Grand Mogul
would hold his clothes, and then I blind-folded him, and with a base ball
club I pounded on the floor as I walked around the gymnasium, while the
lodge, headed by my chum, sung, 'We won't go home till morning' I
stopped in front of the ice water tank, and said, 'Grand Worthy Duke, I
bring before you a pilgrim who has drank of the dregs until his stomach
won't hold water, and who desires to swear off.' The Grand Mogul asked me
if he was worthy and well qualified, and I told him that he had been drunk
more or less since the reunion last summer, which ought to qualify him.
Then the Grand Mogul made Pa repeat the most blood-curdling oath, in which
Pa agreed, if he ever drank another drop, to allow anybody to pull his
toe-nails out with tweezers, to have his liver dug out and fed to dogs,
his head chopped off, and his eyes removed. Then the Mogul said he would
brand the candidate on the bare back with the initial letters of our
order, 'G.T.,' that all might read how a brand had been snatched from the
burning. You'd a dide to see Pa flinch when I pulled up his shirt, and got
ready to brand him.
"My chum got a piece of ice out of the water cooler, and just as he
clapped it on Pa's back I burned a piece of horses hoof in the candle, and
held it to Pa's nose, and I guess Pa actually thought it was his burning
skin that he smelled. He jumped about six feet and said, 'Great heavens,
what you dewin,' and then he began to roll over a barrel which I had
arranged for him. Pa thought he was going down cellar, and he hung to the
barrel, but he was on top half the time. When Pa and the barrel got
through fighting I was beside him, and I said, 'Calm yourself, and be
prepared for the ordeal that is to follow.' Pa asked how much of this dum
fooling there was, and said he was sorry he joined. He said he could let
licker alone without having the skin all burned off his back. I told Pa to
be brave and not weaken, and all would-be well. He wiped the prespiration
off his face on the end of his shirt, and we put a belt around his body
and hitched it to a tackle, and pulled him up so his feet just
off the floor, and then we talked as though we were away off, and I told
my chum to look out that Pa did not hit the gas fixtures, and Pa actually
thought he was being hauled clear up to the roof. I could see he was
scared by the complexion of his hands and feet, as they clawed the air. He
actually sweat so the drops fell on the floor. Bime-by we let him down,
and he was awfully relieved though his feet were not more than two inches
from the floor any of the time. We were just going to slip Pa down a board
with slivers in to give him a realizing sense of the rough road a reformed
man has to travel, and got him straddle of the board, when the Dutchman
came home from the dance fullern a goose, and he drove us boys out, and we
left Pa, and the Dutchman said, 'Vot you vas doing here mit dose boys, you
old duffer, and vere vas your pants?' and Pa pulled off the handkerchief
from his eyes, and the Dutchman said if he didn't get out in a holy minute
he would kick the stuffing out of him, and Pa got out. He took his pants
and put them, on in the alley, and then we came up to Pa and told him that
was the third time the drunken Dutchman had broke up our lodge, but we
should keep on doing good until we had reformed every drunkard in
Milwaukee, and Pa said that was right, and he would see us through, if it
cost every dollar he had. Then we took him home, and when Ma asked if she
couldn't join the lodge, too, Pa said, 'Now you take my advice, and don't
you ever join no Good Templars. Your system could not stand the racket.
Say, I want you to put some cold cream on my back.' I think Pa will be a
different man now, don't you?"
The grocery man said if he was that boy's pa for fifteen minutes he would
be a different boy or there would be a funeral, and the boy took a handful
of soft-shelled almonds and a few layer raisins and skipped out.