"What on earth is that you have got on your upper lip?" said the grocery
man to the bad boy, as he came in and began to peel a rutabaga, and his
upper lip hung down over his teeth, and was covered with something that
looked like shoemaker's wax, "You look as though you had been digging
potatoes with your nose."
"O, that is some of Pa's darn smartness. I asked him if he knew anything
that would make a boy's moustache grow, and he told me the best thing he
ever tried was tar, and for me to rub it on thick when I went to bed, and
wash it off in the morning. I put it on last night, and by gosh I can't
wash it off. Pa told me all I had to do was to use a scouring brick, and
it would come off, and I used the brick, and it took the skin off, and the
tar is there yet, and say, does my lip look very bad?"
The grocery man told him it was the worst looking lip he ever saw, but he
could cure it by rubbing a little cayenne pepper in the tar. He said the
tar would neutralize the pepper, and the pepper would loosen the tar, and
act as a cooling lotion to the lacerated lip. The boy went to a can of
pepper behind the counter, and stuck his finger in and rubbed a lot of it
on his lip, and then his hair began to raise, and he began to cry, and
rushed to the water-pail and ran his face into the water to wash off the
pepper. The grocery man laughed, and when the boy had got the pepper
washed off, and had resumed his rutabaga, he said:
"That seals your fate. No man ever trifles with the feelings of the bold
buccanner of the Spanish main, without living to rue it. I will lay for
you, old man, and don't you forget it. Pa thought he was smart when he got
me to put tar on my lip, to bring my moustache out, and to-day he
lays on a bed of pain, and to-morrow your turn will come. You will regret
that you did not get down on your knees and beg my pardon. You will be
sorry that you did not prescribe cold cream for my bruised lip, instead of
cayenne pepper. Beware, you base twelve ounces to the pound huckster, you
gimlet-eyed seller of dog sausage, you sanded sugar idiot, you small
potato three card monte sleight of hand rotten egg fiend, you villain that
sells smoked sturgeon and dogfish for smoked halibut. The avenger is on
your track."
"Look here, young man, don't you threaten me, or I will take you by the
ear and walk you through green fields, and beside still waters to the
front door and kick your pistol pocket clear around so you can wear it for
a watch pocket in your vest. No boy can frighten me by crimus. But tell
me, how did you get even with your Pa?"
"Well, give me a glass of cider and we will be friends and I will tell
you. Thanks! Gosh, but that cider is made out of mouldy dried apples and
sewer water," and he took a handful of layer raisins off the top of a box
to take the taste out of his mouth, and while the grocer charged a peck of
rutabagas, a gallon of cider and two pounds of raisins to the boy's Pa,
the boy proceeded:
"You see, Pa likes a joke the best of anybody you ever saw, if it is on
somebody else, but he kicks like a steer when it is on him. I asked him
this morning if it wouldn't be a good joke to put some soft soap on the
front step, so the letter-carrier would slip up and spill hisself, and Pa
said it would be elegant. Pa is a Democrat, and he thinks that anything
that will make it unpleasant for Republican office holders, is legitimate,
and he encouraged me to paralyze the letter-carrier. The letter-carrier is
as old a man as Pa, and I didn't want to humiliate him, but I just wanted
Pa to give his consent, so he couldn't kick if he got caught in his own
trap. You see? Well, this morning the minister and two of the
deacons called on Pa, to have a talk with him about his actions in church,
on two or three occasions, when he pulled out the pack of cards with his
handkerchief, and played the music box, and they had a pretty hot time in
the back parlor, and finally they settled it, and were going to sing a
hymn, when Pa handed them a little hymn book, and the minister opened it
and turned pale and said, 'what's this?' and they looked at it, and it was
a book of Hoyle's games instead of a hymn book. Gosh, wasn't the minister
mad! He had started to read a hymn and he quit after he had read two lines
where it said, 'In a game of four-handed euchre, never trump your
partner's ace, but rely on the ace to take the trick on suit.' Pa was
trying to explain how the book came to be there, when the minister and the
deacons started out, and then I poured the two quart tin pail full of soft
soap on the front step. It was this white soap, just the color of the
step, and when I got it spread I went down in the basement. The visitors
came out and Pa was trying to explain to them, about Hoyle, when one of
the deacons stepped on the soap and his feet flew up and he struck on his
pants and slid down the steps. The minister said 'great heavens, deacon,
are you hurt? let me assist you,' and he took two quick steps, and you
have seen these fellows in a nigger show that kick each other head over
heels and fall on their ears, and stand on their heads and turn around
like a top. The minister's feet slipped and the next I saw he was standing
on his head in his hat, and his legs were sort of wilted and fell limp by
his side, and he fell over on his stomach. You talk about spreading the
gospel in heathen lands. It is nothing to the way you can spread it with
two quarts of soft soap. The minister didn't look pious a bit, when he was
trying to catch the railing he looked as though he wanted to
murder every man on earth, but it may be he was tired.
"Well, Pa he was paralyzed, and he and the other deacon rushed out to pick
up the minister and the first old man, and when they struck the steps they
went kiting. Pa's feet somehow slipped backwards, and he turned a
summersault and struck full length on his back, and one heel was across
the minister's neck, and he slid down the steps, and the other deacon fell
all over the other three, and Pa swore at them, and it was the worst
looking lot of pious people I ever saw. I think if the minister had been
in the woods somewhere, where nobody could have heard him, he would have
used language. They all seemed mad at each other. The hired girl told Ma
there was three tramps out on the sidewalk fighting Pa, and Ma she took
the broom and started to help Pa, and I tried to stop Ma, 'cause her
constitution is not very strong and I didn't want her to do any flying
trapeze business, but I couldn't stop her, and she went out with the broom
and a towel tied around her head. Well, I don't know where Ma did strike,
but when she came in she said she had palpitation of the heart, but that
was not the place where she put the arnica. O, but she _did_ go through
the air like a bullet through cheese, and when she went down the steps
a-bumpity-bump, I felt sorry for Ma. The minister had got so he could set
up on the sidewalk, with his back against the lower step, when Ma came
sliding down, and one of the heels of her gaiters hit the minister in the
hair, and the other foot went right through between his arm and his side,
and the broom liked to pushed his teeth down his throat. But he was not
mad at Ma. As soon as he see it was Ma he said, 'Why, sister, the wicked
stand in slippery places, don't they?' and Ma she was mad and said for him
to let go her stocking, and then Pa was mad and he said, 'look-a-here you
sky-pilot, this thing has gone far enough,' and then a policeman
came along and first he thought they were all drunk, but he found they
were respectable, and he got a chip and scraped the soap off of them, and
they went home, and Pa and Ma they got in the house some way, and just
then the letter-carrier came along, but he didn't have any letters for us,
and he didn't come onto the steps, and then I went up stairs and I said,
'Pa, don't you think it is real mean, after you and I fixed the soap on
the steps for the letter-carrier, he didn't come on the step at all,' and
Pa was scraping the soap off his pants with a piece of shingle, and the
hired girl was putting liniment on Ma, and heating it in for palpitation
of the heart, and Pa said, 'You dam idjut, no more of this, or I'll maul
the liver out of you,' and I asked him if he didn't think soft soap would
help a moustache to grow, and he picked up Ma's work-basket and threw it
at my head, as I went down stairs, and I came over here. Don't you think
my Pa is unreasonable to get mad at a little joke that he planned
himself?"
The grocery man said he didn't know, and the boy went out with a pair of
skates over his shoulder, and the grocery man is wondering what joke the
boy will play on him to get even for the cayenne pepper.