CHAPTEE XXI.

HE AND HIS PA IN CHICAGO--NOTHING LIKE TRAVELING TO GIVE

TONE--LAUGHING IN THE WRONG PLACE--A DIABOLICAL PLOT--HIS PA

ARRESTED AS A KIDNAPPER--THE NUMBERS ON THE DOORS CHANGED--

THE WRONG ROOM--“NOTHIN THE MAZZER WITH ME, PET!”--THE TELL-

TALE HAT.

“What is this I hear about your Pa's being arrested in Chicago,” said

the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in with a can for kerosene

and a jug for vinegar.

“Well, it was true, but the police let him go after they hit him a few

licks and took him to the station,” said the boy, as he got the vinegar

into the kerosene can, and the kerosene in the jug. “You see, Pa and me

went down there to stay over night, and have fun. Ma said she druther we

would be away then not when they were cleaning house, and Pa thought it

would do me good to travel, and sort of get tone, and he thought maybe

I'd be better, and not play jokes, but I guess it is born in me. Do you

know I actually think of mean things to do when I am in the most solemn

places. They took me to a funeral once; and I got to thinking what a

stampede there would be if the corpse would come to life and sit up

in the coffin, and I snickered right out, and Pa took me out doors

and kicked my pants. I don't think he orter kicked me for it, cause I

didn't think of it a purpose. Such things have occurred, and I have read

about them, and a poor boy ought to be allowed to think, hadn't he?”

“Yes, but what about his being arrested. Never mind the funeral,” said

the grocery man, as he took his knife and picked some of the lead out of

the weights on the scales.

“We went down on the cars, and Pa had a headache, because he had been

out all night electioneering for the prohibition ticket, and he was

cross, and scolded me, and once he pulled my ear cause I asked him if

he knew the girl he was winking at in a seat across the aisle. I didn't

enjoy myself much, and some men were talking about kidnapping children,

and it gave me an ijee, and just before I got to Chicago I went after a

drink of water at the other end of the car, and I saw a man who looked

as though he wouldn't stand any fooling, and I whispered to him and told

him that the bald-headed man I was sitting with was taking me away from

my home in Milwaukee, and I mistrusted he was going to make a thief or a

pickpocket of me. I said 's-h-h-h,' and told him not to say anything or

the man would maul me. Then I went back to the seat and asked Pa to buy

me a gold watch, and he looked mad and cuffed me on the ear. The man

that I whispered too got talking with some other men, and when we got

off the cars at Chicago a policeman came up to Pa and took him by the

neck and said, 'Mr. Kidnapper, I guess we will run you in.' Pa was mad

and tried to jerk away, and the cop choked him, and another cop came

along and helped, and the passengers crowded around and wanted to lynch

Pa, and Pa wanted to know what they meant, and they asked him where he

stole the kid, and he said I was his kid, and asked me if I wasn't, and

I looked scarred, as though I was afraid to say no, and I said 'Y-e-s

S-e-r, I guess so.' Then the police said the poor boy was scart, and

they would take us both to the station, and they made Pa walk spry, and

when he held back they jerked him along. He was offul mad and said he

would make somebody smart for this, and I hoped it wouldn't be me. At

the station they charged Pa with kidnapping a boy from Milwaukee, and

he said it was a lie, and I was his boy, and I said of course I was,

and the boss asked who told the cops Pa was a kidnapper, and they said

'damfino,' and then the boss told Pa he could go, but not to let it

occur again, and Pa and me went away. I looked so sorry for Pa that he

never tumbled to me, that I was to blame. We walked around town all day,

and went to the stores, and at night Pa was offul tired, and he put me

to bed in the tavern and he went out to walk around and get rested. I

was not tired, and I walked all around the hotel. I thought Pa had gone

to a theatre, and that made me mad, and I thought I would play a joke

on him. Our room was 210 and the next was 212, and there was a old maid

with a scotch terrier occupied 212. I saw her twice and she called me

names, cause she thought I wanted to steal her dog. That made me mad at

her, and so I took my jack knife and drew the tacks out of the tin thing

that the numbers were painted on, and put the old maid's number on our

door and our number on her door, and then I went to bed. I tried to

keep awake, so as to help Pa if he had any difficulty, but I guess I got

asleep, but woke up when the dog barked. If the dog had not woke me up,

the woman's scream would, and if that hadn't, Pa would. You see, Pa came

home from the theatre about 'leven, and he had been drinking. He says

everybody drinks when they go to Chicago, even the minister. Pa looked

at the numbers on the doors all along the hall till he found 210, and

walked right in and pulled off his coat and threw it on the lounge where

the dog was. The old maid was asleep, but the dog barked, and Pa said,

'That cussed boy has bought a dog.' and he kicked the dog, and then the

old maid said, 'what is the matter pet?'”

[Illustration: In the wrong room p105]

“Pa laffed and said, 'Nothin the mazzer with _me_, pet,' and then you

ought to have heard the yelling. The old maid covered her head and

kicked and yelled, and the dog snarled and bit Pa on the pants, and Pa

had his vest off and his suspenders unbuttoned, and he got scared and

took his coat and vest and went out in the hall, and I opened our door

and told Pa he was in the wrong room, and he said he guessed he knowed

it, and he came in our room and I locked the door, and then the bell

boy, and the porter, and the clerk came up to see what ailed the old

maid, and she said a burglar got in the room, and they found Pa's hat

on the lounge, and they took it and told her to be quiet and they would

find the burglar. Pa was so scared that he sweat like everything, and

the bed was offul warm, and he pretended to go to sleep, but he was

wondering how he could get his hat back. In the morning I told him it

would be hard work to explain it to Ma how he happened to get into the

wrong room, and he said it wasn't necessary to say anything about it to

Ma. Then he gave me five dollars to go out and buy him a new hat, and

he said I might keep the change if I would not mention it when I got

home, and I got him one for ten shillings, and we took the eight o'clock

train in the morning and came home, and I spose the Chicago detectives

are trying to fit Pa's hat onto a burglar. Pa seemed offully relieved

when we got across the state line into Wisconsin. But you'd a dide to

see him come out of that old lady's room with his coat and vest on his

arm, and his suspenders hanging down, looking scart. He dassent lick me

any more or I'll tell Ma where Pa left his hat.”

CHAPTER XXII.

HIS PA IS DISCOURAGED. “I AIN'T NO JONER!”--THE STORY OP THE

ANCIENT PROPHET--THE SUNDAY SCHOOL FOLKS GO BACK ON THE BAD

BOY--CAGED CATS--A COMMITTEE MEETING--A REMARKABLE CAT-

ASTROPHE!--“THAT BOY BEATS HELL!”--BASTING THE BAD BOY--THE

HOT-WATER-IN-THE SPONGE TRICK.

“Say, you leave here mighty quick,” said the grocery man to the bad boy,

as he came in, with his arm in a sling, and backed up againt the stove

to get warm. “Everything has gone wrong since you got to coming here,

and I think you are a regular Jonah. I find sand in my sugar, kerosene

in the butter, the codfish is all picked off, and there is something

wrong every time you come here. Now you leave.”

“I aint no Joner,” said the boy as he wiped his nose on his coat sleeve,

and reached into a barrel for a snow apple. “I never swallered no whale.

Say, do you believe that story about Joner being in the whale's belly,

all night? I don't. The minister was telling about it at Sunday school

last Sunday, and asked me what I thought Joner was doing while he was in

there, and I told him I interpreted the story this way, that the whale

was fixed up inside with upper and lower berths, like a sleeping car,

and Joner had a lower berth, and the porter made up the berth as soon as

Joner came in with his satchel, and Joner pulled off his boots and gave

them to the porter to black, and put his watch under the pillow and

turned in. The boys in Sunday school all laffed, and the minister said

I was a bigger fool than Pa was, and that was useless. If you go back on

me, now, I won't have a friend, except my chum and a dog, and I swear,

by my halidom, that I never put no sand in your sugar, or kerosene in

your butter. I admit the picking off of the codfish, but you can charge

it to Pa, the same as you did the eggs that I pushed my chum over into

last summer, though I thought you did wrong in charging Christmas prices

for dog days' eggs. When my chum's Ma scraped his pants she said there

was not an egg represented on there that was less than two years old.

The Sunday school folks have all gone back on me, since I put kyan

pepper on the stove, when they were singing 'Little Drops of Water,' and

they all had to go out doors and air themselves, but I didn't mean to

let the pepper drop on the stove. I was just holding it over the stove

to warm it, when my chum hit the funny bone of my elbow. Pa says I am a

terror to cats. Every time Pa says anything, it gives me a new idea. I

tell you Pa has got a great brain, but sometimes he don't have it with

him. When he said I was a terror to cats I thought what fun there is

in cats, and me and my chum went to stealing cats right off, and before

night we had eleven cats caged. We had one in a canary bird cage, three

in Pa's old hat boxes, three in Ma's band box, four in valises, two in a

trunk, and the rest in a closet up stairs.”

“That night Pa said he wanted me to stay home because the committee that

is going to get up a noyster supper in the church was going to meet at

our house, and they might want to send me on errands. I asked him if my

chum couldn't stay too, 'cause he is the healthiest infant to run after

errands that ever was, and Pa said he could stay, but we must remember

that there musn't be no monkey business going on. I told him there

shouldn't be no monkey business, but I didn't promise nothing about

cats. Well, sir, you'd a dide. The committee was in the library by the

back stairs, and me and my chum got the cat boxes all together, at the

top of the stairs, and we took them all out and put them in a clothes

basket, and just as the minister was speaking, and telling what a great

good was done by these oyster sociables, in bringing the young people

together, and taking their minds from the wickedness of the world, and

turning their thoughts into different channels, one of the old torn

cats in the basket gave a 'purmeow' that sounded like the wail of a lost

soul, or a challenge to battle, I told my chum that we couldn't hold the

bread-board over the clothes basket much longer, when two or three cats

began to yowl, and the minister stopped talking and Pa told Ma to open

the stair door and tell the hired girl to see what was the matter up

there. She thought our cat had got shut up in the storm door, and she

opened the stair door to yell to the girl, and then I pushed the clothes

basket, cats and all down the back stairs. Well, sir, I suppose no

committee for a noyster supper, was ever more astonished. I heard ma

fall over a willow rocking chair, and say, 'scat,' and I heard Pa say,

'well, I'm dam'd,' and a girl that sings in the choir say, 'Heavens, I

am stabbed,' then my chum and me ran to the front of the house and come

down the front stairs looking as innocent as could be, and we went in

the library, and I was just going to tell Pa if there was any errands he

wanted run my chum and me was just aching to run them, when a yellow cat

without any tail was walking over the minister, and Pa was throwing a

hassock at two cats that were clawing each other under the piano, and Ma

was trying to get her frizzes back on her head, and the choir girl was

standing on the lounge with her dress pulled up, trying to scare cats

with her striped stockings, and the minister was holding his hands up,

and I guess he was asking a blessing on the cats, and my chum opened the

front door and all the cats went out. Pa and Ma looked at me and I said

it wasn't me, and the minister wanted to know how so much cat hair got

on my coat and vest, and I said a cat met me in the hall and kicked me,

and Ma cried, and Pa said that boy beats hell, and the minister said I

would be all right if I had been properly brought up, and then Ma was

mad, and the committee broke up. Well, to tell the honest truth Pa

basted me, and yanked me around until I had to have my arm in a sling,

but what's the use of making such a fuss about a few cats. Ma said she

never wanted to have my company again, cause I spoiled everything. But

I got even with Pa for basting me, this morning, and I dassent go home.

You see Ma has got a great big bath sponge as big as a chair cushion,

and this morning I took the sponge and filled it with warm water, and

took the feather cushion out of the chair Pa sits in at the table, and

put the sponge in its place, and covered it over with the cushion cover,

and when we all got set down to the table Pa came in and sat down on

it to ask a blessing. He started in by closing his eyes and placing his

hands up in front of him like a letter V, and then he began to ask that

the food we were about to partake off be blessed, and then he was going

on to ask that 'all of us be made to see the error of our ways, when

he began to hitch around, and he opened one eye and looked at me, and I

looked as pious as a boy can look when he knows the pancakes are getting

cold, and Pa he kind of sighed and said 'Amen' sort of snappish, and he

got up and told Ma he didn't feel well, and she would have to take his

place and pass around the sassidge and potatoes, and he looked kind

of scart and went out with his hand on his pistol pocket, as though he

would like to shoot, and Ma she got up and went around and sat in Pa's

chair. The sponge didn't hold more than half a pail full of water, and

I didn't want to play no joke on Ma, cause the cats nearly broke her up,

but she sat down and was just going to help me, when she rung the bell

and called the hired girl, and said she felt as though her neuralgia was

coming on, and she would go to her room, and told the girl to sit down

and help Hennery. The girl sat down and poured me out some coffee, and

then she said. 'Howly Saint Patrick, but I blave those pancakes are

burning,' and she went out in the kitchen. I drank my coffee, and then

took the big sponge out of the chair and put the cushion in the place of

it, and then I put the sponge in the bath room, and I went up to Pa and

Ma's room, and asked them if I should go after the doctor, and Pa had

changed his clothes and got on his Sunday pants, and he said, 'never

mind the doctor, I guess we will pull through,' and for me to get out

and go to the devil, and I came over here. Say, there is no harm in a

little warm water, is there? Well, I'd like to know what Pa and Ma and

the hired girl thought. I am the only real healthy one there is in our

family.”

CHAPTER XXIII.

HE BECOMES A DRUGGIST--“I HAVE GONE INTO BUSINESS!”--A NEW

ROSE GERANIUM PERFUME--THE BAD BOY IN A DRUGGIST'S STORE--

PRACTICING ON HIS PA--AN EXPLOSION--THE SEIDLETZ POWDER--HIS

PA'S FREQUENT PAINS--POUNDING INDIA-RUBBER--CURING A WART.

“Whew! What is that smells so about this store? It seems as though

everything had turned frowy,” said the grocery man to his clerk, in the

presence of the bad boy, who was standing with his back to the stove,

his coat tails parted with his hands, and a cigarette in his mouth.

“May be it is me that smells frowy,” said the boy as he put his thumbs

in the armholes of his vest, and spit at the keyhole in the door. “I

have gone into business.”

“By thunder, I believe it is you,” said the grocery man, as he went up

to the boy, snuffed a couple of times, and then held his hand to his

nose. “The board of health will kerosene you, if they ever smell that

smell, and send you to the glue factory. What business you gone into to

make you smell so rank?”

“Well, you see Pa began to think it was time I learned a trade, or a

perfession, and he saw a sign in a drug store window, 'boy wanted,' and

as he had a boy he didn't want, he went to the druggist and got a job

for me. This smell on me will go off in a few weeks. You know I wanted

to try all the perfumery in the store, and after I had got about forty

different extracts on my clothes, another boy that worked there he fixed

up a bottle of benzine and assafety and brimstone, and a whole lot of

other horrid stuff, and labeled it 'rose geranium,' and I guess I just

wallered in it. It _is_ awful, aint it? It kerflummixed Ma when I went

into the dining-room the first night that I got home from the store,

and broke Pa all up, He said I reminded him of the time that they had a

litter of skunks under the barn. The air seemed fixed around where I

am, and everybody seems to know who fixed it. A girl came in the store

yesterday to buy a satchet, and there wasn't anybody there but me, and I

didn't know what it was, and I took down everything in the store pretty

near, before I found it, and then I wouldn't have found it only the

proprietor came in. The girl asked the proprietor if there wasn't a

good deal of sewer-gas in the store, and he told me to go out and shake

myself. I think the girl was mad at me because I got a nursing bottle

out of the show case, with a rubber muzzle, and asked her if that was

what she wanted. Well, she told me a satchet was something for the

stummick, and I thought a nursing bottle was the nearest thing to it.”

“I should think you would drive all the customers away from the store,”

said the grocery man, as he opened the door to let the fresh air in.

“I don't know but I will, but I am hired for a month on trial, and I

shall stay. You see, I shan't practice on anybody but Pa for a spell.

I made up my mind to that when I gave a woman some salts instead of

powdered borax, and she came back mad. Pa seems to want to encourage me,

and is willing to take anything that I ask him to, He had a sore throat

and wanted something for it, and the boss drugger told me to put some

tannin and chlorate of potash in a mortar, and grind it, and I let

Pa pound it with the mortar, and while he was pounding I dropped in a

couple of drops of sulphuric acid, and it exploded and blowed Pa's

hat clear across the store, and Pa was whiter than a sheet. He said he

guessed his throat was all right, and he wouldn't come near me again

that day. The next day Pa came in and I was laying for him. I took a

white seidletz powder and a blue one, and dissolved them in separate

glasses, and when Pa came in I asked him if he didn't want some

lemonade, and he said he did, and I gave him the sour one and he drank

it. He said it was too sour, and then I gave him the other glass, that

looked like water, to take the taste out of his mouth, and he drank it.

Well, sir, when those two powders got together in Pa's stummick, and

began to siz and steam, and foam, Pa pretty near choked to death, and

the suds came out of his nostrils, and his eyes stuck out, and as soon

as he could get his breath he yelled 'fire,' and said he was poisoned,

and called for a doctor, but I thought as long as we had a doctor right

in the family there was no use of hiring one, so I got a stomach pump,

and I would have had him baled out in no time, only the proprietor came

in and told me to go and wash some bottles, and he gave Pa a drink of

brandy, and Pa said he felt better.”

[Illustration: A new way to take Seidlitz Powders p015]

“Pa has learned where we keep the liquor, and he comes in two or three

times a day with a pain in his stomach. They play awful mean tricks on a

boy in a drug store. The first day they put a chunk of something sort

of blue into a mortar, and told me to pulverize it, and then made it up

into two grain pills. Well, sir, I pounded that chunk all the forenoon,

and it never pulverized at all, and the boss told me to hurry up, as the

woman was waiting for the pills, and I mauled it till I was nearly dead,

and when it was time to go to supper the boss came and looked in the

mortar, and took out the chunk, and said, 'You dum fool, you have been

pounding all day on a chunk of India rubber, instead of blue mass!'

Well, how did I know? But I will get even with them if I stay there long

enough, and don't you forget it. If you have a prescription you want

filled you can come down to the store and I will put it up for you

myself, and then you will be sure you get what you pay for.

“Yes, said the grocery man, as he cut off a piece of limberg cheese and

put on the stove, to purify the air in the room, “I should laugh to see

myself taking any medicine you put up. You will kill some one yet, by

giving them poison instead of quinine. But what has your Pa got his nose

tied up for? He looks as though he had had a fight.”

“O, that was from my treatment. He had a wart on his nose. You know that

wart. You remember how the minister told him if other peoples business

had a button-hole in it, Pa could button the wart in the button-hole,

as he always had his nose there. Well, I told Pa I could cure that wart

with caustic, and he said he would give five dollars if I could cure

it, so I took a stick of caustic and burned the wart off, but I guess

I burned down into the nose a little, for it swelled up as big as a

lobster. Pa says he would rather have a whole nest of warts than such a

nose, but it will be all right in a year or two.”

CHAPTER XXIV.

HE QUITS THE DRUG BUSINESS. HE HAS DISSOLVED WITH THE

DRUGGER--THE OLD LADY AND THE GIN--THE BAD BOY IGNOMINIOUSLY

FIRED--HOW HE DOSED HIS PA's BRANDY--THE BAD BOY AS “HAWTY

AS A DOOK”--HE GETS EVEN WITH HIS GIRL--THE BAD BOY WANTS A

QUIET PLACE--THE OLD MAN THREATENS THE PARSON.

“What are you loafing around here for,” says the grocery man to the bad

boy one day this week. “It is after nine o'clock, and I should think you

would want to be down to the drug store. How do you know but there may

be somebody dying for a dose of pills?”

“O, darn the drug store. I have got sick of that business, and I have

dissolved with the drugger. I have resigned. The policy of the store

did not meet with my approval, and I have stepped out and am waiting for

them to come and tender me a better position at an increased salary,”

said the boy, as he threw a cigar stub into a barrel of prunes and lit a

fresh one.

“Resigned, eh?” said the grocery man as he fished out the cigar stub and

charged the boy's father with two pounds of prunes, “didn't you and the

boss agree?”

“Not exactly, I gave an old lady some gin when she asked for camphor and

water, and she made a show of herself. I thought I would fool her, but

she knew mighty well what it was, and she drank about half a pint of

gin, and got to tipping over bottles and kegs of paint, and when the

drug man came in with his wife, the old woman threw her arms around his

neck and called him her darling, and when he pushed her away, and told

her she was drunk, she picked up a bottle of citrate of magnesia and

pointed it at him, and the cork came out like a pistol, and he thought

he was shot, and his wife fainted away, and the police came and took

the old gin refrigerator away, and then the drug man told me to face the

door, and when I wasn't looking he kicked me four times, and I landed

in the street, and he said if I ever came in sight of the store again

he would kill me dead. That is the way I resigned. I tell you, they will

send for me again. They never can run that store without me.

“I guess they will worry along without you,” said the grocery man. “How

does your Pa take your being fired out? I should think it would brake

him all up.”

“O, I think Pa rather likes it. At first he thought he had a soft snap

with me in the drug store, cause he has got to drinking again, like a

fish, and he has gone back on the church entirely; but after I had put a

few things in his brandy he concluded it was cheaper to buy it, and he

is now patronizing a barrel house down by the river.

“One day I put some Castile soap in a drink of brandy, and Pa leaned

over the back fence more than an hour, with his finger down his throat.

The man that collects the ashes from the alley asked Pa if he had lost

anything, and Pa said he was only 'sugaring off.' I don't know what that

is. When Pa felt better he came in and wanted a little whiskey to

take the taste out of his mouth, and I gave him some, with about a

teaspoonful of pulverized alum in it. Well, sir, you'd a dide. Pa's

mouth and throat was so puckered up that he couldn't talk. I don't think

that drugman will make anything by firing me out, because I shall turn

all the trade that I control to another store. Why, sir, sometimes there

were eight and nine girls in the store all at wonct, on account of my

being there. They came to have me put extracts on their handkerchiefs,

and to eat gum drops--he will lose all that trade now. My girl that went

back on me for the telegraph messenger boy, she came with the rest of

the girls, but she found, that I could be as 'hawty as a dook.' I got

even with her, though. I pretended I wasn't mad, and when she wanted me

to put some perfumery op her handkerchief I said all right, and I put

on a little geranium and white rose, and then I got some tincture of

assafety, and sprinkled it on her dress and cloak when she went out.

That is about the worst smelling stuff that ever was, and I was glad

when she went out and met the telgraph boy on the corner. They went off

together; but he came back pretty soon, about the homesickest boy you

ever saw, and he told my chum he would never go with that girl again

because she smelled like spoiled oysters or sewer gas. Her folks noticed

it, and made her go and wash her feet and soak herself, and her brother

told my chum it didn't do any good, she smelled just like a glue

factory, and my chum--the darn fool--told her brother that it was me who

perfumed her, and he hit me in the eye with a frozen fish, down by the

fish store, and that's what made my eye black; but I know how to cure a

black eye. I have not been in a drug store eight days, and not know how

to cure a black eye; and I guess I learned that girl not to go back on a

boy 'cause he smelled like a goat.

“Well, what was it about your leaving the wrong medicine at houses?

The policeman in this ward told me you come pretty near killing several

people by leaving the wrong medicine.”

“The way of it was this. There was about a dozen different kinds of

medicine to leave at different places, and I was in a hurry to go to the

roller skating rink, so I got my chum to help me, and we just took the

numbers of the houses, and when we rung the bell we would hand out the

first package we come to, and I understand there was a good deal of

complaint. One old maid who ordered powder for her face, her ticket drew

some worm lozengers, and she kicked awfully, and a widow who was going

to be married, she ordered a celluloid comb and brush, and she got a

nursing bottle with a rubber nozzle, and a toothing ring, and she made

quite a fuss; but the woman who was weaning her baby and wanted the

nursing bottle, she got the comb and brush and some blue pills, and

she never made any fuss at all. It makes a good deal of difference, I

notice, whether a person gets a better thing than they ordered or not.

But the drug business is too lively for me. I have got to have a quiet

place, and I guess I will be a cash boy in a store. Pa says he thinks I

was cut out for a bunko steerer, and I may look for that kind of a job.

Pa he is a terror since he got to drinking again. He came home the other

day, when the minister was calling on Ma, and just cause the minister

was sitting on the sofa with Ma, and had his hand on her shoulder, where

she said the pain was when the rheumatiz came on, Pa was mad and told

the minister he would kick his liver clear around on the other side

if he caught him there again, and Ma felt awful about it. After the

minister had gone away, Ma told Pa he had got no feeling at all, and

Pa said he had got enough feeling for one family, and he didn't want no

sky-sharp to help him. He said he could cure all the rheumatiz there was

around his house, and then he went down town and didn't get home till

most breakfast time. Ma says she thinks I am responsible for Pa's

falling into bad ways again, and now I am going to cure him. You watch

me, and see if I don't have Pa in the church in less than a week,

praying and singing, and going home with the choir singers, just as

pious as ever. I am going to get a boy that writes a woman's hand to

write to Pa, and--but I must not give it away. But you just watch Pa,

that's all. Well, I must go and saw some wood. It is coming down a good

deal, from a drug clerk to sawing wood, but I will get on top yet, and

don't you forget it.”

CHAPTER XXV.

HIS PA KILLS HIM--A GENIUS AT WHISTLING--A FUR-LINED CLOAK A

SURE CURE FOR CONSUMPTION--ANOTHER LETTER SENT TO THE OLD

MAN--HE RESOLVES ON IMMEDIATE PUNISHMENT--THE BLADDER-BUFFER

THE EXPLOSION--A TRAGIC SCENE--HIS PA VOWS TO REFORM.

“For heaven's sake dry up that whistling,” said the grocery man to

the bad boy, as he sat on a bag of peanuts, whistling and filling his

pockets. “There is no sense in such whistling. What do you whistle for,

anyway?”

“I am practicing my profession,” said the boy, as he got up and

stretched himself, and cut off a slice of cheese, and took a few

crackers. “I have always been a good whistler, and I have decided to

turn my talent to account. I am going to hire an office and put out a

sign, 'Boy furnished to whistle for lost dogs.' You see there are dogs

lost every day, and any man would give half a dollar to a boy to find

his dog. I can hire out to whistle for dogs, and can go around whistling

and enjoying myself, and make money, Don't you think it is a good

scheme?” asked the boy of the grocery man.

“Naw,” said the grocery man, as he charged the cheese to the boy's

father, and picked up his cigar stub, which he had left on the counter,

and which the boy had rubbed on the kerosene barrel, “No, sir, that

whistle would scare any dog that heard it. Say, what was your Pa running

after the doctor in his shirt sleeves for last Sunday morning? He looked

scared. Was your Ma sick again?”

“O, no, Ma is healthy enough, now she has got a new fur lined cloak. She

played consumption on Pa, and coughed so she liked to raise her lights

and liver, and made Pa believe she couldn't live, and got the doctor

to prescribe a fur lined circular, and Pa went and got one, and Ma has

improved awfully. Her cough is all gone, and she can walk ten miles. I

was the one that was sick. You see, I wanted to get Pa into the church

again, and get him to stop drinking, so I got a boy to write a letter to

him, in a female hand, and sign the name of a choir singer Pa was mashed

on, and tell him she was yearning for him to come back to the church,

and that the church seemed a blank without his smiling face, and

benevolent heart, and to please come back for her sake. Pa got the

letters Saturday night and he seemed tickled, but I guess he dreamed

about it all night, and Sunday morning he was mad, and he took me by the

ear and said I couldn't come no 'Daisy' business on him the second time.

He said he knew I wrote the letter, and for me to go up to the store

room and prepare for the almightiest licking a boy ever had, and he

went down stairs and broke up an apple barrel and got a stave to whip me

with. Well, I had to think mighty quick, but I was enough for him. I got

a dried bladder in my room, one that me and my chum got to the slotter

house, and blowed it partly up, so it would be sort of flat-like, and I

put it down inside the back part of my pants, right about where Pa hits

when he punishes me. I knowed when the barrel stave hit the bladder it

would explode. Well, Pa he came up and found me crying. I can cry just

as easy as you can turn on the water at a faucet, and Pa took off his

coat and looked sorry. I was afraid he would give up whipping me when

he see me cry, and I wanted the bladder experiment to go on, so I looked

kind of hard, as if I was defying him to do his worst, and then he took

me by the neck and laid me across a trunk. I didn't dare struggle much

for fear the bladder would loose itself, and Pa said, 'Now Hennery, I am

going to break you of this damfoolishness, or I will break your back,'

and he spit on his hands and brought the barrel stave down on my best

pants. Well, you'd a dide if you had heard the explosion. It almost

knocked me off the trunk. It sounded like firing a firecracker away down

cellar in a barrel, and Pa looked scared. I rolled off the trunk, on the

floor, and put some flour on my face, to make me look pale, and then I

kind of kicked my legs like a fellow who is dying on the stage, after

being stabbed with a piece of lath, and groaned, and said, 'Pa you have

killed me, but I forgive you,' and then rolled around, and frothed at

the mouth, cause I had a piece of soap in my mouth to make foam. Well,

Pa, was all broke up. He said, 'Great God, what have I done? I have

broke his spinal column. O, my poor boy, do not die?' I kept chewing

the soap and foaming at the mouth, and I drew my legs up and kicked them

out, and clutched my hair, and rolled my eyes, and then kicked Pa in the

stummick as he bent over me, and knocked his breath out of him, and then

my limbs began to get rigid, and I said, 'Too late, Pa, I die at the

hand of an assassin. Go for a doctor.'”

[Illustration: Too late, Pa, I die at the hand of an assassin p127]

“Pa throwed his coat over me, and started down stairs on a run, 'I have

murdered my brave boy,' and he told Ma to go up stairs and stay with me,

cause I had fallen off a trunk and ruptured a blood vessel, and he went

after a doctor. When he went out the front door, I sat up and lit a

cigarette, and Ma came up and I told her all about how I fooled Pa, and

if she would take on and cry, when Pa got back, I would get him to go to

church again, and swear off drinking and she said she would.

“So when Pa and the doc. came back, Ma was sitting on a velocipede I used

to ride, which was in the store-room, and she had her apron over her

face, and she just more than bellowed. Pa he was pale, and he told the

doc. he was just a playing with me with a little piece of board, and he

heard something crack, and he guessed my spine got broke falling off the

trunk. The doctor wanted to feel where my spine was broke, but I opened

my eyes and had a vacant kind of stare, like a woman who leads a dog

by a string, and looked as though my mind was wandering, and I told the

doctor there was no use setting my spine, as it was broke in several

places, and I wouldn't let him feel of the dried bladder. I told Pa I

was going to die, and I wanted him to promise me two things on my dying

bed. He cried and said he would, and I told him to promise me he would

quit drinking, and attend church regular, and he said he would never

drink another drop, and would go to church every Sunday. I made him get

down on his knees beside me and swear it, and the doc. witnessed it, and

Ma said she was so glad, and Ma called the doctor out in in the hall and

told him the joke, and the doc. came in and told Pa he was afraid Pa's

presence would excite the patient, and for him to put on his coat and

go out and walk around the block, or go to church, and Ma and he would

remove me to another room, and do all that was possible to make my last

hours pleasant. Pa he cried, and said he would put on his plug hat and

go to church, and he kissed me, and got flour on his nose, and I came

near laughing right out, to see the white flour on his red nose, when

I thought how the people in church would laugh at Pa. But he went out

feeling mighty bad, and then I got up and pulled the bladder out of my

pants, and Ma and the doc. laughed awful. When Pa got back from church

and asked for me, Ma said that I had gone down town. She said the doctor

found my spine was only uncoupled and he coupled it together, and I was

all right. Pa said it was 'almighty strange, cause I heard the spine

break, when I struck him with the barrel stave.' Pa was nervous all the

afternoon, and Ma thinks he suspects that we played it on him. Say, you

don't think there is any harm in playing it on an old man a little for a

good cause, do you?”

The grocery man said he supposed, in the interest of reform it was all

right, but if it was his boy that played such tricks he would take an

ax to him, and the boy went out, apparently encouraged, saying he hadn't

seen the old man since the day before, and he was almost afraid to meet

him.

CHAPTER XXVI.

HIS PA MORTIFIED--SEARCHING FOR SEWER GAS--THE POWERFUL ODOR

OF LIMBERGER CHEESE AT CHURCH--THE AFTER MEETING--FUMIGATING

THE HOUSE--THE BAD BOY RESOLVES TO BOARD AT AN HOTEL.

“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 a 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.”

[Illustration: Just as I am p131]

“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.

“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 come around in the pews looking

for a dog, and when the minister got over his sermon, and wiped the

perspiration 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 rending

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 a 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 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

limberg 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.”

CHAPTER XXVII.

HIS PA BROKE UP--THE BAD BOY DON'T THINK THE GROCER FIT FOH

HEAVEN--HE IS VERY SEVERE ON HIS OLD FRIEND--THE NEED OF A

NEW REVISED EDITION--THE BAD BOY TURNS REVISER--HIS PA

REACHES FOR THE POKER--A SPECIAL PROVIDENCE--THE SLED

SLEWED!--HIS PA UNDER THE MULES.

“Well, I guess I will go to hell. I will see you later,” said the bad

boy to the grocery man, as he held a cracker under the faucet of the

syrup keg, and then sat down on a soap box by the stove and proceeded

to make a lunch, while the grocery man charged the boy's father with a

gallon of syrup and a pound of crackers.

“What do you mean, you profane wretch, talking about meeting me later

in Hades,” said the indignant grocery man. “I expect to pass by the hot

place where you are sizzling, and go to the realms of bliss, where

there is one continued round of hap-hiness, and angels playing on golden

harps, and singing hymns of praise.”

“Why, Pa says I will surely go to hell, and I thought you would probably

be there, as it costs something to get to heaven, and you can get to the

other place for nothing. Say, you would be a healthy delegate to go

to heaven, with a lot of girl angels, wouldn't you, smelling of frowy

butter, as you always do, and kerosene, and herring, and bar soap, and

cheese, and rotten potatoes. Say, an angel wouldn't stay on the same

golden street with you, without holding her handkerchief to her nose,

and you couldn't get in there, anyway, cause you would want to pay your

entrance fee out of the store.

“Say, you get out of here, condemn you. You are getting sassy. There is

no one that is more free hearted than I am,” said the grocery man.

“O, give us a _siesta_. I am onto you bigger than an elevator. When they

had the oyster sociable at the church, you gave four pounds of musty

crackers with worms in, and they tasted of kerosene, and when the

minister prayed for those who had generously contributed to the

sociable, you raised up your head as though you wanted them all to

know he meant you. If a man can get to heaven on four pounds of musty

crackers, done up in a paper that has been around mackerel, then what's

the use of a man being good, and giving sixteen ounces to the pound?

But, there, don't blush, and cry. I will use my influence to get your

feet onto the golden streets of the New Jerusalem, but you have got to

quit sending those small potatoes to our house, with a few big ones on

top of the basket. I'll tell you how it was that Pa told me I would go

to hell. You see Pa has been reading out of an old back number bible,

and Ma and me argued with him about getting a new revised edition.

We told him that the old one was all out of style, and that all the

neighbors had the newest cut in bibles, with dolman sleeves, and

gathered in the back, and they put on style over us, and we could not

hold up our heads in society when it was known that we were wearing

the old last year's bible. Pa kicked against it, but finally got one.

I thought I had as much right to change things in the revised bible, as

the other fellows had to change the old one, so I pasted some mottoes

and patent medicine advertisements in it, after the verses. Pa never

reads a whole chapter, but reads a verse or two and skips around. Before

breakfast, the other morning, Pa got the new bible and started to read

the ten commandments, and some other things. The first thing Pa struck

was, 'Verily I say unto you, try St. Jacobs oil for rheumatism.' Pa

looked over his specks at Ma, and then looked at me, but I had my face

covered with my hands, sort of pious. Pa said he didn't think it was

just the thing to put advertisements in the bible, but Ma said she

didn't know as it was any worse than to have a patent medicine notice

next to Beecher's sermon in the religious paper. Pa sighed and turned

over a few leaves, and read, 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife,

nor his ox, if you love me as I love you no knife can cut our love in

two.' That last part was a motto that I got out of a paper of candy. Pa

said that the sentiment was good, but he didn't think the revisers had

improved the old commandment very much. Then Pa turned over and read,

'Take a little wine for the stomach's sake, and keep a bottle of Reed's

Gilt Edged tonic on your side-board, and you can defy malaria, and

chills and fever.' Pa was hot. He looked at it again, and noticed that

the tonic commandment was on yellow paper, and the corner curled up, and

Pa took hold of it, and the paste that I stuck it on with was not good,

and it come off, and when I saw Pa lay down the bible, and put his

spectacles in the case, and reach for the fire poker, I knew he was not

going to pray, and I looked out the window and yelled dog fight, and

I lit out, and Pa followed me as far as the sidewalk, and it was that

morning when it was so slippery, and Pa's feet slipped out from under

him, and he stood on his neck, and slid around on his ear, and the

special providence of sleet on the sidewalk saved me. Say, do you

believe in special providence? What was the use of that sleet on the

sidewalk, if it was not to save sinners?”

[Illustration: Special Providences for a Bad Boy p138]

“O, I don't know anything about special providences,” said the grocery

man, “but I know you have got two of your pockets filled with them

boneless raisins since you have been talking, and my opinion is you will

steal. But, say, what is your Pa on crutches for? I see him hobbling

down town this morning. Has he sprained his ankle?”

“Well, I guess his ankle got sprained with all the rest. You see, my

chum and me went bobbing, and Pa said he supposed he used to be the

greatest bobber, when he was a boy, that ever was. He said he used to

slide down a hill that was steeper than a church steeple. We asked him

to go with us, and we went to that street that goes down by the depot,

and we had two sleds hitched together, and there were mor'n a hundred

boys, and Pa wanted to steer, and he got on the front sled, and when we

got about half way down the sled slewed, and my chum and me got off

all right, but Pa got shut up between the two sleds, and the other boys

behind fell over Pa and one sled runner caught him in the trowsers leg,

and dragged him over the slippery ice clear to the bottom, and the whole

lay out run into the street car, and the mules got wild and kicked, and

Pa's suspenders broke, and when my chum and me got down there Pa was

under the car, and a boy's boots was in Pa's shirt bosom, and another

boy was straddle of Pa's neck, and the crowd rushed up from the depot,

and got Pa out, and began to yell 'fire,' and 'police,' and he kicked at

a boy that was trying to get his sled out of the small of Pa's back, and

a policeman came along and pushed Pa and said, 'Go away from here, ye

owld divil, and let the b'ys enjoy themselves,' and he was going to

arrest Pa, when me and my chum told him we would take Pa home. Pa said

the hill was not steep enough for him, or he wouldn't have fell off. He

is offul stiff to-day: but he says he will go skating with us next week,

and show us how to skate. Pa means well, but he don't realize that he is

getting stiff and can't be as kitteny as he used to be. He is very

kind to me, If I had some fathers I would have been a broken backed,

disfigured angel long ago. Don't you think so?”

The grocery man said he was sure of it, and the boy got out with his

boneless raisins, and pocket full of lump sugar.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

HIS PA GOES SKATING--THE BAD BOY CARVES A TURKEY--HIS PA'S

FAME AS A SKATER--THE OLD MAN ESSAYS TO SKATE ON ROLLERS--

HIS WILD CAPERS--HE SPREADS HIMSELF--HOLIDAYS A CONDEMNED

NUISANCE--THE BAY BOY'S CHRISTMAS PRESENTS.

“What is that stuff on your shirt bosom, that looks like soap grease?”

said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came into the grocery the

morning after Christmas.

The boy looked at his shirt front, put his fingers on the stuff and

smelled of his fingers, and then said, “O, that is nothing but a little

of the turkey dressing and gravy. You see after Pa and I got back from

the roller skating rink yesterday, Pa was all broke up and he couldn't

carve the turkey, and I had to do it, and Pa sat in a stuffed chair with

his head tied up, and a pillow amongst his legs, and he kept complaining

that I didn't do it right. Gol darn a turkey any way. I should think

they would make a turkey flat on the back, so he would lay on a greasy

platter without skating all around the table. It looks easy to see Pa

carve a turkey, but when I speared into the bosom of that turkey,

and began to saw on it, the turkey rolled-around as though it was on

castors, and it was all I could do to keep it out of Ma's lap. But I

rasseled with it till I got off enough white meat for Pa and Ma and dark

meat enough for me, and I dug out the dressing, but most of it flew

into my shirt bosom, cause the string that tied up the place where

the dressing was concealed about the person of the turkey, broke

prematurely, and one oyster hit Pa in the eye, and he said I was as

awkward as a cross-eyed girl trying to kiss a man with a hair lip. If

I ever get to be the head of a family I shall carve turkeys with a corn

sheller.”

“But what broke your Pa up at the roller skating rink,” asked the

grocery man.

“O, everything broke him up. He is, split up so Ma buttons the top

of his pants to his collar button, like a by cycle rider. Well, he no

business to have told me and my chum that he used to be the best skater

in North America, when he was a boy. He said he skated once from Albany

to New York in an hour and eighty minutes. Me and my chum thought if Pa

was such a terror on skates we would get him to put on a pair of roller

skates and enter him as the “great unknown,” and clean out the whole

gang. We told Pa that he must remember that roller skates were different

from ice skates, and that maybe he couldn't skate on them, but he

said it didn't make any difference what they were as long as they were

skates, and he would just paralyze the whole crowd. So we got a pair of

big roller skates for him, and while we were strapping them on, Pa

he looked at the skaters glide around on the smooth wax floor just as

though they were greased. Pa looked at the skates on his feet, after

they were fastened, sort of forlorn like, the way a horse thief does

when they put shackles on his legs, and I told him if he was afraid he

couldn't skate with them we would take them off, but he said he would

beat anybody there was there, or bust a suspender. Then we straightened

Pa up, and pointed him towards the middle of the room, and he said,

“leggo,” and we just give him a little push to start him, and he began

to go.

“Well, by gosh, you'd a dide to have seen Pa try to stop. You

see, you can't stick in your heel and stop, like you can on ice skates,

and Pa soon found that out, and he began to turn sideways, and then he

threw his arms and walked on his heels, and he lost his hat, and his

eyes began to stick out, cause he was going right towards an iron post.

One arm caught the post and he circled around it a few times, and then

he let go and began to fall, and, sir, he kept falling all across the

room, and everybody got out of the way, except a girl, and Pa grabbed

her by the polonaise, like a drowning man grabs at straws, though there

wasn't any straws in her polonaise as I know of, but Pa just pulled her

along as though she was done up in a shawl-strap, and his feet went out

from under him and he struck on his shoulders and kept a going, with the

girl dragging along like a bundle of clothes.”

[Illustration: Pa grabbed her by the polonaise p143]

“If Pa had had another pair of roller skates on his shoulders, and

castors on his ears, he couldn't have slid along any better. Pa is a

short, big man, and as he was rolling along on his back, he looked like

a sofa with castors on being pushed across a room by a girl. Finally Pa

came to the wall and had to stop, and the girl fell right across him,

with her roller skates in his neck, and she called him an old brute, and

told him if he didn't let go of her polonaise she would murder him. Just

then my chum and me got there and we amputated Pa from the girl, and

lifted him up, and told him for heaven's sake to let us take off the

skates, cause he couldn't skate any more than a cow, and Pa was mad and

said for us to let him alone, and he could skate all right, and we let

go and he struck out again. Well, sir, I was ashamed. An old man like Pa

ought to know better than to try to be a boy. This last time Pa said he

was going to spread himself, and if I am any judge of a big spread, he

did spread himself. Somehow the skates had got turned around side-ways

on his feet, and his feet got to going in different directions, and Pa's

feet were getting so far apart that I was afraid I would have two Pa's,

half the size, with one leg apiece.

“I tried to get him to take up a collection of his legs, and get them

both in the same ward but his arms flew around and one hit me on the

nose, and I thought if he wanted to strike the best friend he had, he

could run his old legs hisself. When he began to seperate I could hear

the bones crack, but maybe it was his pants, but anyway he came down on

the floor like one of these fellows in a circus who spreads hissel, and

he kept going and finally he surrounded an iron post with his legs, and

stopped, and looked pale, and the proprietor of the rink told Pa if he

wanted to give a flying trapeze performance he would have to go to the

gymnasium, and he couldn't skate on his shoulders any more, cause other

skaters were afraid of him. Then Pa said he would kick the liver out of

the proprietor of the rink, and he got up and steaded himself, and then

he tried to kick the man, but both heels went up to wonct, and Pa turned

a back summersault and struck right on his vest in front. I guess it

knocked the breath out of him, for he didn't speak for a few minutes,

and then he wanted to go home, and we put him in a street car, and

he laid down on the hay and rode home. O, the work we had to get Pa's

clothes off. He had cricks in his back, and everywhere, and Ma was

away to one of the neighbors, to look at the presents, and I had to

put liniment on Pa, and I made a mistake and got a bottle of furniture

polish, and put it on Pa and rubbed it in, and when Ma came home, Pa

smelled like a coffin at a charity funeral, and Ma said there was no way

of getting that varnish off of Pa till it wore off. Pa says holidays are

a condemned nuisance anyway. He will have to stay in the house all this

week.

“You are pretty rough on the old man,” said the grocery man, “after he

has been so kind to you and given you nice presents.”

“Nice presents nothin. All I got was a 'come to Jesus' Christmas

card, with brindle fringe, from Ma, and Pa gave me a pair of his old

suspenders, and a calender with mottoes for every month, some quotations

from scripture, such as 'honorthy father and mother,' and 'evil

communications corrupt two in the bush,' and 'a bird in the hand beats

two pair.' Such things don't help a boy to be good. What a boy wants is

club skates, and seven shot revolvers, and such things. Well, I must

go and help Pa roll over in bed, and put on a new porous plaster. Good

bye.”

CHAPTER XXIX.

HIS PA GOES CALLING--HIS PA STARTS FORTH--A PICTURE OF THE

OLD MAN “FULL “--POLITENESS AT A WINTER PICNIC--ASSAULTED BY

SANDBAGGERS--RESOLVED TO DRINK NO MORE COFFEE--A GIRL FULL

OF “AIG NOGG.”

“Say, you are getting too alfired smart,” said the grocery man to the

bad boy as he pushed him into a corner by the molasses barrel, and took

him by the neck and choked him so his eyes stuck out. “You have driven

away several of my best customers, and now, confound you, I am going to

have your life,” and he took up a cheese knife and began to sharpen it

on his boot.

“What's the--gurgle--matter,” asked the choking boy, as the grocery

man's fingers let up on his throat a little, so he could speak. “I haint

done nothin.”

“Didn't you hang up that dead gray torn cat by the heels, in front of

my store, with the rabbits I had for sale? I didn't notice it until

the minister called me out in front of the store, and pointing to the

rabbits, asked what good fat cats were selling for. By crimus, this

thing has got to stop. You have got to move out of this ward or I will.”

The boy got his breath and said it wasn't him that put the cat up there.

He said it was the policeman, and he and his chum saw him do it, and he

just come in to tell the grocery man about it, and before he could speak

he had his neck nearly pulled off. The boy began to cry, and the grocery

man said he was only joking, and gave him a box of sardines, and they

made up. Then he asked the boy how his Pa put in his New Years, and the

boy sighed and said:

“We had a sad time at our house New Years. Pa insisted on making calls,

and Ma and me tried to prevent it, but he said he was of age, and

guessed he could make calls if he wanted to, so he looked at the morning

paper and got the names of all the places where they were going to

receive, and he turned his paper collar, and changed ends with his

cuffs, and put some arnica on his handkerchief, and started out. Ma told

him not to drink anything, and he said he wouldn't, but he did. He was

full the third place he went to. O, so full. Some men can get full

and not show it, but when Pa gets full, he gets so full his back teeth

float, and the liquor crowds his eyes out, and his mouth gets loose

and wiggles all over his face, and he laughs all the time, and the

perspiration just oozes out of him, and his face gets red, and he walks

_so_ wide. O, he disgraced us all. At one place he wished the hired girl

a happy new year more than twenty times, and hung his hat on her elbow,

and tried to put on a rubber hall mat for his over shoes. At another

place he walked up a lady's train, and carried away a card basket full

of bananas and oranges. Ma wanted my chum and me to follow Pa and bring

him home, and about dark we found him in the door yard of a house where

they have statues in front of the house, and he grabbed me by the arm,

and mistook me for another caller, and insisted on introducing me to a

marble statue without any clothes on. He said it was a friend of his,

and it was a winter picnic.”

[Illustration: Happy New Year Mum p149]

“He hung his hat on an evergreen, and put his overcoat on the iron fence,

and I was so mortified I almost cried. My chum said if his Pa made such

a circus of himself he would sand bag him. That gave me an idea, and

when we got Pa most home I went and got a paper box covered with red

paper, so it looked just like a brick, and a bottle of tomato ketchup,

and when we got Pa up on the steps at home I hit him with the paper

brick, and my chum squirted the ketchup on his head, and we demanded

his money, and then he yelled murder, and we lit out, and Ma and the

minister, who was making a call on her, all the afternoon; they came

to the door and pulled Pa in. He said he had been attacked by a band of

robbers, and they knocked his brains out, but he whipped them, and then

Ma saw the ketchup brains oozing out of his head, and she screamed, and

the minister said, 'Good heavens he is murdered,' and just then I came

in the back door and they sent me after the doctor, and they put him on

the lounge, and tied up his head with a towel to keep the brains in, and

Pa began to snore, and when the doctor came in it took them half an hour

to wake him, and then he was awful sick to his stummick, and then Ma

asked the doctor if he would live, and the doc. analyzed the ketchup

and smelled of it and told Ma he would be all right if he had a little

Worcester sauce to put on with the ketchup, and when he said Pa would

pull through, Ma looked awful sad. Then Pa opened his eyes and saw the

minister and said that was one of the robbers that jumped on him, and he

wanted to whip the minister, but the doc. held Pa's arms and Ma sat on

his legs, and the minister said he had got some other calls to make, and

he wished Ma a happy new year in the hall, much as fifteen minutes. His

happy new year to Ma is most as long as his prayers. Well, we got Pa to

bed, and when we undressed him we found nine napkins in the bosom of

his vest, that he had picked up at the places where he called. He is all

right this morning, but he says it is the last time he will drink coffee

when he makes New Year's calls.”

“Well, then you didn't have much fun yourself on New Years. That's too

bad,” said the grocery man, as he looked at the sad eyed youth. “But you

look hard. If you were old enough I should say you had been drunk, your

eyes are so red.”

“Didn't have any fun eh? Well, I wish I had as many collars as I had

fun. You see, after Pa got to sleep Ma wanted me and my chum to go

to the houses that Pa had called at and return the napkins he had

Kleptomaniaced, so we dressed up and went. The first house we called at

the girls were sort of demoralized. I don't know as I ever saw a girl

drunk, but those girls acted queer. The callers had stopped coming, and

the girls were drinking something out of shaving cups that looked like

lather, and they said it was 'aignogg.' They laffed and kicked up their

heels wuss nor a circus, and their collars got unpinned, and their faces

was red, and they put their arms around me and my chum and hugged us and

asked us if we didn't want some of the custard. You'd a dide to see

me and my chum drink that lather. It looked just like soap suds with

nutmaig in it, but by gosh it got in its work sudden. At first I was

afraid when the girls hugged me, but after I had drank a couple of

shaving cups full of the 'aignogg' I wasn't afraid no more, and I hugged

a girl so hard she catched her breath and panted and said, 'O, don't.'

Then I kissed her, and she is a great big girl, bigger'n me, but she

didn't care. Say, did you ever kiss a girl full of aignogg? If you did

it would break up your grocery business. You would want to waller in

bliss instead of selling mackerel. My chum ain't no slouch either. He

was sitting in a stuffed chair holding another New Year's girl, and I

could hear him kiss her so it sounded like a cutter scraping on bare

ground. But the girl's Pa came in and said he guessed it was time to

close the place, unless they had a license for an all night house, and

me and my chum went out. But _wasn't_ we sick when we got out doors. O,

it seemed as though the pegs in my boots was the only thing that kept

them down, and my chum he like to dide. He had been to dinner and supper

and I had only been skating all day, so he had more to contend with than

I did. O, my, but that lets me out on aignogg. I don't know how I got

home, but I got in bed with Pa, cause Ma was called away to attend a

baby matinee in the night. I don't know how it is, but there never is

anybody in our part of the town that has a baby but they have it in the

night, and they send for Ma. I don't know what she has to be sent for

every time for. Ma ain't to blame for all the young ones in this town,

but she has got up a reputashun, and when we hear the bell ring in the

night Ma gets up and begins to put on her clothes, and the next morning

she comes in the dining room with a shawl over her head, and says, 'its

a girl and weighs ten pounds,' or a boy, if its a boy baby. Ma was out

on one of her professional engagements, and I got in bed with Pa. I had

heard Pa blame Ma about her cold feet, so I got a piece of ice about as

big as a raisin box, just zactly like one of Ma's feet, and I laid

it right against the small of Pa's back. I couldn't help laffing, but

pretty soon Pa began to squirm and he said, 'Why'n 'ell don't you warm

them feet before you come to bed,' and then he hauled back his leg and

kicked me clear out in the middle of the floor, and said if he married

again he would marry a woman who had lost both of her feet in a railroad

accident. Then I put the ice back in the bed with Pa and went to my

room, and in the morning Pa said he sweat more'n a pail full in the

night. Well, you must excuse me, I have an engagement to shovel snow off

the side-walk. But before I go, let me advise you not to drink aignogg,

and don't sell torn cats for rabbits,” and he got out the door just in

time to miss the rutabaga that the grocery man threw at him.

CHAPTER XXX.

HIS PA DISSECTED--THE MISERIES OP THE MUMPS--NO PICKLES

THANK YOU--ONE MORE EFFORT TO REFORM THE OLD MAN--THE BAD

BOY PLAYS MEDICAL STUDENT--PROCEEDS TO DISSECT HIS PA--

“GENTLEMEN I AM NOT DEAD!”--SAVED FROM THE SCALPEL!--“NO

MORE WHISKY FOR YOU.”

“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, wont 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 and 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 singe 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, quite a big 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 thrashing machine, and lost 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 laid 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

sircingle 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 hickory nuts in our mouths

so our voices would sound different, so he wouldn't know us, and I 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 come 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 bottles, 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 the body. He will be dead before we are

done with him. We must remember that society has some claims 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 impatient 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 whiskey 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.

CHAPTER XXXI.

HIS PA JOINS A TEMPERANCE SOCIETY. THE GROCERY MAN

SYMPATHISES WITH THE OLD MAN--WARNS THE BAD BOY THAT HE MAY

HAVE A STEP-FATHER!--THE BAD BOY SCORNS THE IDEA--INTRODUCES

HIS PA TO THE GRAND “WORTHY DUKE!”--THE SOLEMN OATH--THE

BRAND PLUCKED FROM THE BURNING.

“Don't you think my Pa is showing his age 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, and 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 stepfather 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 chérubin 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 a 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 is 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 of 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 wont 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

perspiration 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 were 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 come 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.

CHAPTER XXXII.

HIS PA'S MARVELOUS ESCAPE--THE GROCERY MAN HAS NO VASELINE--

THE OLD MAN PROVIDES THREE FIRE ESCAPES--ONE OF THE ESCAPES

TESTED--HIS PA SCANDALIZES THE CHURCH--“SHE'S A DARLING!”--

WORLDLY MUSIC IN THE COURTS OF ZION.

“Got any vaseline,” said the bad boy to the grocery man, as he went into

the store one cold morning, leaving the door open, and picked up a cigar

stub that had been thrown down near the stove, and began to smoke it.

“Shut the door, dum you. Was you brought up in a saw mill? You'll freeze

every potato in the house. No, I haven't got vaseline. What do you want

of vaseline?” said the grocery man, as he set the syrup keg on a chair

by the stove where it would thaw out.

“Want to rub it on Pa's legs,” said the boy, as he tried to draw smoke

through the cigar stub.

“What is the matter with your Pa's legs? Rheumatiz?”

“Wuss nor rheumatiz,” said the boy, as he threw away the cigar stub and

drew some cider in a broken tea cup. “Pa has got the worst looking hind

legs you ever saw. You see, since there has been so many fires Pa has

got offul scared, and he has bought three fire escapes, made out of rope

with knots in them, and he has been telling us every day how he could

rescue the whole family in case of fire. He told us to keep cool,

whatever happened, and to rely on him. If the house got on fire we were

all to rush to Pa, and he would save us. Well, last night Ma had to

go to one of the neighbors, where they was going to have twins, and we

didn't sleep much, cause Ma had to come home twice in the night to get

saffron, and an old flannel petticoat that I broke in when I was a kid,

cause the people where Ma went did not know as twins was on the bill

of fare, and they only had flannel petticoats for one. Pa was cross

at being kept awake, and told Ma he hoped when all the children in

Milwaukee were born, and got grown up, she would take in her sign and

not go around nights and act as usher to baby matinees. Pa says there

ought to be a law that babies should arrive on the regular day trains,

and not wait for the midnight express. Well, Pa he got asleep, and

he slept till about eight o'clock in the morning, and the blinds were

closed, and it was dark in his room, and I had to wait for my breakfast

till I was hungry as a wolf, and the girl told me to wake Pa up, so I

went up stairs, and I don't know what made me think of it, but I had

some of this powder they make red fire with in the theatre, that me

and my chum had the 4th of July, and I put it in a washdish in the

bath-room, and I touched it off and hollered fire. I was going to wake

Pa up and tell him it was all right, and laugh at him. I guess there

was too much fire, or I yelled too loud, cause Pa jumped out of bed and

grabbed a rope and rushed through the hall towards the back window, that

goes out on a shed. I tried to say something, but Pa ran over me and

told me to save myself, and I got to the back window to tell him there

was no fire just as he let himself out the window He had one end of the

rope tied to the leg of the washstand, and he was climbing down the back

side of the shed by the kitchen, with nothing on but his nightshirt, and

he was the horriblest looking object ever was, with his legs flying and

trying to stick his toenails into the rope and the side of the house.”

[Illustration: Pa's Fire escape p169]

“I dont think a man looks well in society with nothing on but his

nightshirt. I didn't blame the hired girls for being scared when they

saw Pa and his legs coming down outside the window, and when they yelled

I went down to the kitchen, and they said a crazy man with no clothes

but a pillow slip around his neck was trying to kick the window in,

and they run into the parlor, and I opened the door and let Pa in the

kitchen. He asked me if anybody else was saved and then I told him there

was no fire, and he must have dreamed he was in hell, or somewhere. Well

Pa was astonished, and said he must be wrong in the head, and I left him

thawing himself by the stove while I went after his pants, and his legs

were badly chilled, but I guess nothin' was froze. He lays it all to

Ma, and says if she would stay at home and let people run their own baby

shows, there would be more comfort in the house. Ma came in with a shawl

over her head, and a bowl full of something that smelled frowy, and

after she had told us what the result of her visit was, she sent me

after vaseline to rub Pa's legs. Pa says that he has demonstrated that

if a man is cool and collected, in case of fire, and goes deliberately

at work to save himself, he will come out all right.”

“Well, you are the meanest boy I ever heard of,” said the grocery man.

“But what about your Pa's dancing a clog dance in church Sunday? The

minister's hired girl was in here after some codfish yesterday morning,

and she said the minister said your Pa had scandalized the church the

worst way.”

“O, he didn't dance in church. He was a little excited, that's all. You

see, Pa chews tobacco, and it is pretty hard on him to sit all through

a sermon without taking a chew, and he gets nervous. He always reaches

around in his pistol pocket, when they stand up to sing the last time,

and feels in his tobacco box and gets out a chew, and puts it in his

mouth when the minister pronounces the benediction, and then when they

get out doors he is all ready to spit. He always does that. Well, my

chum had a present, on Christmas, of a music box, just about as big as

Pa's tobacco box, and all you have to do is to touch a spring and it

plays, 'She's a Daisy, She's a Dumpling.' I borrowed it and put it in

Pa's pistol pocket, where he keeps his tobacco box, and when the choir

got most through singing Pa reached his hand in his pocket and began to

fumble around for a chew. He touched the spring, and just as everybody

bowed their heads to receive the benediction, and it was so still you

could hear a gum drop, the music box began to play, and in the stillness

it sounded as loud as a church organ. Well, I thought Ma would sink. The

minister heard it, and everybody looked at Pa, too, and Pa turned red,

and the music box kept up, 'She's a Daisy,' and the minister looked mad

and said 'Amen,' and the people began to put on their coats, and the

minister told the deacon to hunt up the source of that worldly music,

and they took Pa into the room back of the pulpit and searched him, and

Ma says Pa will have to be churched. They kept the music box, and I have

got to carry in coal to get money enough to buy my chum a new music box.

Well, I shall have to go and get that vaseline or Pa's legs will suffer.

Good day.”

CHAPTER XXXIII.

HIS PA JOKES HIM. THE BAD BOY CAUGHT AT LAST--HOW TO GROW A

MOUSTACHE--TAR AND CAYENNE PEPPER--THE GROCERYMAN'S PATE IS

SEALED--FATHER AND SON JOIN IN A PRACTICAL JOKE--SOFT SOAP

ON THE STEPS--DOWN FALL OF MINISTERS AND DEACONS--MA TO THE

RESCUE!--THE BAD BOY GETS EVEN WITH HIS PA.

“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

buccanneer 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 rotton egg fiend, you

villian 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 his-self, 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 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 in 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 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 step

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 bizness, 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 like 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 him. 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.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

HIS PA GETS MAD--A BOOM IN COURT-PLASTER--THE BAD BOY

DECLINES BEING MAULED!--THE OLD MAN GETS A HOT BOX--THE BAD

BOY BORROWS A CAT!--THE BATTLE!--“HELEN BLAZES”--THE CAT

VICTORIOUS!--THE BAD BOY DRAWS THE LINE AT KINDLING WOOD!

“I was down to the drug store this morning, and saw your Ma buying a

lot of court-plaster, enough to make a shirt, I should think. What's she

doing with so much court-plaster?” asked the grocery man of the bad boy,

as he came in and pulled off his boots by the stove and emptied out

a lot of snow, that had collected as he walked through a drift, which

melted and made a bad smell.

“O, I guess she is going to patch Pa up so he will hold water. Pa's

temper got him into the worst muss you ever see, last night. If that

museum was here now they would hire Pa and exhibit him as the tattooed

man. I tell you, I have got too old to be mauled as though I was a kid,

and any man who attacks me from this out, wants to have his peace made

with the insurance companies, and know that his calling and election

is sure, because I am a bad man, and don't you forget it.” And the boy

pulled on his boots and looked so cross and desperate that the grocery

man asked him if he wouldn't try a little new cider.

“Good heavens!” said the grocery man, as the boy swallowed the

cider, and his face resumed its natural look, and the piratical frown

disappeared with the cider. “You have not stabbed your father, have you?

I have feared that one thing would bring on another, with you, and that

you would yet be hung.”

“Naw, I haven't stabbed him. It was another cat that stabbed him. You

see, Pa wants me to do all the work around the house. The other day

he bought a load of kindling wood, and told me to carry it into the

basement. I have not been educated up to kindling wood, and I didn't do

it. When supper time came, and Pa found that I had not carried in the

kindling wood, he had a hot box, and he told me if that wood was not in

when he came back from the lodge, that he would warm my jacket. Well, I

tried to hire some one to carry it in, and got a man to promise to come

in the morning and carry it in and take his pay in groceries, and I was

going to buy the groceries here and have them charged to Pa. But that

wouldn't help me out that night. I knew when Pa came home he would

search for me. So I slept in the back hall on a cot. But I didn't want

Pa to have all his trouble for nothing, so I borrowed an old torn cat

that my chum's old maid aunt owns, and put the cat in my bed. I thought

if Pa came in my room after me, and found that by his unkindness I had

changed to a torn cat, he would be sorry. That is the biggest cat

you ever see, and the worst fighter in our ward. It isn't afraid of

anything, and can whip a New Foundland dog quicker than you could put

sand in a barrel of sugar. Well, about eleven o'clock I heard Pa tumble

over the kindling wood, and I knew by the remark he made, as the wood

slid around under him, that there was going to be a cat fight real

quick. He come up to Ma's room, and sounded Ma as to whether Hennery had

retired to his virtuous couch. Pa is awful sarcastic when he tries

to be. I could hear him take off his clothes, and hear him say, as he

picked up a trunk strap, 'I guess I will go up to his room and watch the

smile on his face, as he dreams of angels. I yearn to press him to

my aching bosom. I thought to myself, mebbe you won't yearn so much

directly. He come up stairs, and I could hear him breathing hard. I

looked around the corner and could see he just had on his shirt and

pants, and his suspenders were hanging down, and his bald head shone

like a calcium light just before it explodes. Pa went in my room, and up

to the bed, and I could hear him say, 'Come out here and bring in that

kindling wood, or I will start a fire on your base-burner with this

strap.' And then there was a yowling such as I never heard before, and

Pa said, 'Helen Blazes,' and the furniture in my room began to fall

around and break. O, _my!_ I think Pa took the torn cat right by the

neck, the way he does me, and that left all the cat's feet free to

get in their work. By the way the cat squawled as though it was being

choked, I know Pa had him by the neck. I suppose the cat thought Pa was

a whole flock of New Found-land dogs, and the cat had a record on dogs,

and it kicked awful. Pa's shirt was no protection at all in a cat fight,

and the cat just walked all around Pa's stomach, and Pa yelled 'police,'

and 'fire,' and 'turn on the hose,' and he called Ma, and the cat

yowled. If Pa had had the presence of mind enough to have dropped the

cat, or rolled it up in the mattrass, it would have been all right, but

a man always gets rattled in time of danger, and he held onto the cat

and started down stairs yelling murder, and he met Ma coming up.

“I guess Ma's night-cap, or something, frightened the cat some more,

cause he stabbed Ma on the night-shirt with one hind foot, and Ma said

'mercy on us,' and she went back, and Pa stumbled on a hand-sled that

was on the stairs, and they all fell down, and the cat got away and went

down in the coal bin and yowled all night. Pa and Ma went into their

room, and I guess they anointed themselves with vasaline, and Pond's

extract, and I went and got into my bed, cause it was cold out in the

hall, and the cat had warmed my bed as well as it had warmed Pa. It was

all I could do to go to sleep, with Pa and Ma talking all night, and

this morning I came down the back stairs, and havn't been to breakfast,

cause I don't want to see Pa when he is vexed. You let the man that

carries in the kindling wood have six shillings worth of groceries, and

charge them to Pa. I have passed the kindling wood period in a boy's

life, and have arrived at the coal period. I will carry in coal, but I

draw the line at kindling wood.

“Well, you are a cruel, bad boy,” said the grocery man, as he went to

the book and charged the six shillings.

“O, I don't know. I think Pa is cruel. A man who will take a poor kitty

by the neck, that hasn't done any harm, and tries to chastise the

poor thing with a trunk strap, ought to be looked after by the humane

society. And if it is cruel to take a cat by the neck, how much more

cruel is it to take a boy by the neck, that had diphtheria only a few

years ago, and whose throat is tender. Say, I guess I will accept your

invitation to take breakfast with you,” and the boy cut off a piece of

bologna and helped himself to the crackers, and while the grocery man

was cut shoveling off the snow from the sidewalk, the boy filled his

pockets with raisins and loaf sugar, and then went out to watch the man

carry in his kindling wood.

CHAPTER XXXV.

HIS PA AN INVENTOR THE BAD BOY A MARTYR--THE DOG-COLLAR IN

THE SAUSAGE--A PATENT STOVE--THE PATENT TESTED!--HIS PA A

BURNT OFFERING--EARLY BREAKFAST!

“Ha! Ha! Now I have got you,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, the

other morning, as he came in and jumped upon the counter and tied the

end of a ball of twine to the tail of a dog, and “sicked” the dog on

another dog that was following a passing sleigh, causing the twine to

pay out until the whole ball was scattered along the block. “Condemn

you, I've a notion to choke the liver out of you. Who tied that twine to

the dog's tail?”

The boy choked up with emotion, and the tears came into his eyes, and

he said he didn't know anything about the twine or the dog. He said

he noticed the dog come in, and wag his tail around the twine, but he

supposed the dog was a friend of the family, and did not disturb him.

“Everybody lays everything that is done to me,” said the boy, as he put

his handkerchief to his nose, “and they will be sorry for it when I die.

I have a good notion to poison myself by eating some of your glucose

sugar.

“Yes, and you do about everything that is mean. The other day a lady

came in and told me to send up to her house some of my country sausage,

done up in muslin bags, and while she was examining it she noticed

something hard inside the bags, and asked me what it was, and I opened

it, and I hope to die if there wasn't a little brass pad-lock and a

piece of a red morocco dog collar imbedded in the sausage. Now how do

you suppose that got in there?” and the grocery man looked savage.

The boy looked interested, and put on an expression as though in deep

thought, and finally said, “I suppose the farmer that put up the sausage

did not strain the dog meat. Sausage meat ought to be strained.”

The grocery man pulled in about half a block of twine, after the dog

had run against a fence and broke it, and told the boy he knew perfectly

well how the brass pad-lock came to be in the sausage, but thinking it

was safer to have the good will of the boy than the ill will, he offered

him a handfull of prunes.

“No,” says the boy, “I have swore off on mouldy prunes. I am no

kinder-garten any more. For years I have eaten rotten peaches around

this store, and everything you couldn't sell, but I have turned over a

new leaf now, and after this nothing is too good for me, Since Pa has

got to be an inventor, we are going to live high.”

“What's your Pa invented? I saw a hearse and three hacks go up on your

street the other day, and I thought may be you had killed your Pa.”

“Not much. There will be more than three hacks when I kill Pa, and don't

you forget it. Well, sir, Pa has struck a fortune, if he can make the

thing work. He has got an idea about coal stoves that will bring him

several million dollars, if he gets a royalty of five dollars on every

cook stove in the world. His idea is to have a coal stove on castors

with the pipe made to telescope out and in, and rubber hose for one

joint, so you can pull the stove all around the room and warm any

particular place. Well, sir, to hear Pa tell about it, you would think

it would revolutionize the country, and maybe it will when he gets it

perfected, but he came near burning the house up, and scared us half

to death this morn-ing, and burned his shirt off, and he is all covered

with cotton with sweet oil on, and he smells like salad dressing.

“You see Pa had a pipe made and some castors put on our coal stove,

and he tied a rope to the hearth of the stove, and had me put in some

kindling wood and coal last night, so he could draw the stove up to the

bed and light the fire without getting up. Ma told him he would put

his foot in it, and he told her to dry up, and let him run the stove

business. He said it took a man with brain to run a patent right, and Ma

she pulled the clothes over her head and let Pa do the fire act. She has

been building the fires for twenty years, and thought she would let Pa

see how good it was. Well, Pa pulled the stove to the bed, and touched

off the kindling wood. I guess maybe I got a bundle of kindling wood

that the hired girl had put kerosene on, cause it blazed up awful and

smoked, and the blaze bursted out the doors and windows of the stove,

and Pa yelled fire, and I jumped out of bed and rushed in and he was the

scartest man you ever see, and you'd a dide to see how he kicked when I

threw a pail of water on his legs and put his shirt out. Ma did not get

burned, but she was pretty wet, and she told Pa she would pay the five

dollars royalty on that stove and take the castors off and let it remain

stationary. Pa says he will make it work if he burns the house down. I

think it was real mean in Pa to get mad at me because I threw cold water

on him instead of warm water, to put his shirt out. If I had waited till

I could heat water to the right temperature I would have been an orphan

and Pa would have been a burnt offering. But some men always kick at

everything. Pa has given up business entirely and says he shall devote

the remainder of his life curing himself of the different troubles

that I get him into. He has retained a doctor by the year, and he buys

liniment by the gallon.”

“What was it about your folks getting up in the middle of the night to

eat? The hired girl was over here after some soap the other morning, and

she said she was going to leave your house.”

“Well, that was a picnic. Pa said he wanted breakfast earlier than we

was in the habit of having it, and he said I might see to it that the

house was awake early enough. The other night I awoke with the awfulest

pain you ever heard of. It was that night that you give me and my chum

the bottle of pickled oysters that had begun to work. Well, I couldn't

sleep, and I thought I would call the hired girls, and they got up and

got breakfast to going, and then I rapped on Pa and Ma's door and told

them the breakfast was getting cold, and they got up and came down. We

eat breakfast by gas light, and Pa yawned and said it made a man feel

good to get up and get ready for work before daylight, the way he used

to on the farm, and Ma she yawned and agreed with Pa, 'cause she has to,

or have a row. After breakfast we sat around for an hour, and Pa said

it was a long time getting daylight, and bimeby Pa looked at his watch.

When he began to pull out his watch I lit out and hid in the storeroom,

and pretty soon I heard Pa and Ma come up stairs and go to bed, and then

the hired girls, they went to bed, and when it was all still, and the

pain had stopped inside of my clothes, I went to bed, and I looked

to see what time it was and it was two o'clock in the morning. We got

dinner at eight o'clock in the morning, and Pa said he guessed he would

call up the house after this, so I have lost another job, and it was all

on account of that bottle of pickled oysters you gave me. My chum says

he had colic too, but he didn't call up his folks. It was all he could

do to get up hisself. Why don't you sometimes give away something that

is not spiled?”

The grocery man said he guessed he knew what to give away, and the boy

went out and hung up a sign in front of the grocery, that he had made on

wrapping paper with red chalk, which read, “Rotten eggs, good enough for

custard pies, for 18 cents a dozen.”

CHAPTER XXXVI.

HIS PA GETS BOXED--A PARROT FOR SALE--THE OLD MAN IS DOWN ON

THE GROCER--“A CONTRITE HEART BEATS A BOB-TAIL FLUSH!”--

POLLLY'S RESPONSES--CAN A PARROT GO TO HELL?--THE OLD MAN

GETS ANOTHER BLACK EYE--DUFFY HITS FOR KEEPS--NOTHING LIKE

AN OYSTER FOR A BLACK EYE.

“You don't want to buy a good parrot, do you,” said the bad boy to the

grocery man, as he put his wet mittens on the top of the stove to dry,

and kept his back to the stove so he could watch the grocery man, and be

prepared for a kick, if the man should remember the rotten egg sign that

the boy put up in front of the grocery, last week.

“Naw, I don't want no parrot. I had rather have a fool boy around than

a parrot. But what's the matter with your Ma's parrot? I thought she

wouldn't part with him for anything.”

“Well, she wouldn't until Wednesday night; but now she says she will not

have him around, and I may have half I can get for him. She told me

to go to some saloon, or some disreputable place and sell him, and I

thought maybe he would about suit you,” and the boy broke into a

bunch of celery, and took out a few tender stalks and rubbed them on a

codfish, to salt them, and began to bite the stalks, while he held the

sole of one wet boot up against the stove to dry it, making a smell of

burned leather that came near turning the stomach of the cigar sign.

“Look-a-here, boy, don't you call this a disreputable place. Some of the

best people in this town come here,” said the grocery man, as he held up

the cheese-knife and grated his teeth as though he would like to jab it

into, the youth.

“O, that's all right, they come here 'cause you trust; but you make up

what you lose by charging it to other people. Pa will make it hot

for you the last of the week. He has been looking over your bill, and

comparing it with the hired girl, and she says we haven't ever had a

prune, or a dried apple, or a raisin, or any cinnamon, or crackers

and cheese out of your store, and he says you are worse than the James

Brothers, and that you used to be a three card monte man; and he will

have you arrested for highway robbery, but you can settle that with

Pa. I like you, because you are no ordinary sneak thief. You are a

high-toned, gentlemanly sort of a bilk, and wouldn't take anything you

couldn't lift. O, keep your seat, and don't get excited. It does a man

good to hear the truth from one who has got the nerve to tell it.

“But about the parrot. Ma has been away from home for a week, having a

high old time in Chicago, going to theatres and things, and while she

was gone, I guess the hired girl or somebody learned the parrot some new

things to say. A parrot that can only say 'Polly wants a cracker,' dont

amount to anything--what we need is new style parrots that can converse

on the topics of the day, and say things original. Well, when Ma got

back, I guess her conscience hurt her for the way she had been carrying

on in Chicago, and so when she heard the basement of the church was

being frescoed, she invited the committee to hold the Wednesday evening

prayer meeting at our house. First, there were four people came, and

Ma asked Pa to stay to make up a quorum, and Pa said seeing he had two

pair, he guessed he would stay in, and if Ma would deal him a queen he

would have a full hand. I don't know what Pa meant; but he plays draw

poker sometimes. Anyway, there was eleven people came, including the

minister, and after they had talked about the neighbors a spell, and Ma

had showed the women a new tidy she had worked for the heathen, with

a motto on it which Pa had taught her: 'A contrite heart beats a

bob-tailed flush,'--and Pa had talked to the men about a religious

silver mine he was selling stock in, which he advised them as a friend

to buy for the glory of the church, they all went in the back parlor,

and the minister led in prayer. He got down on his knees right under the

parrot's cage, and you'd a dide to see Polly hang on to the wires of the

cage with one foot, and drop an apple core on the minister's head. Ma

shook her handkerchief at Polly, and looked sassy, and Polly got up on

the perch, and as the minister got warmed up, and began to raise the

roof, Polly said, 'O, dry up.' The minister had his eyes shut, but he

opened one of them a little and looked at Pa. Pa was tickled at the

parrot, but when the minister looked at Pa as though it was him that was

making irreverent remarks, Pa was mad.

“The minister got to the 'Amen,' and Polly shook hisself and said 'What

you giving us?' and the minister got up and brushed the bird seed

off his knees, and he looked mad. I thought Ma would sink with

mortification, and I was sitting on a piano stool, looking as pious as

a Sunday school superintendent the Sunday before he skips out with the

bank's funds; and Ma looked at me as though she thought it was me that

had been tampering with the parrot. Gosh, I never said a word to that

parrot, and I can prove it by my chum.

“Well, the minister asked one of the sisters if she wouldn't pray, and

she wasn't engaged, so she said with pleasure, and she kneeled down,

but she corked herself, 'cause she got one knee on a cast iron dumb bell

that I had been practising with. She said 'O my,' in a disgusted sort

of a way, and then she began to pray for the reformation of the youth

of the land, and asked for the spirit to descend on the household, and

particularly on the boy that was such a care and anxiety to his parents,

and just then Polly said, 'O, pull down your vest.' Well, you'd a dide

to see that woman look at me. The parrot cage was partly behind the

window curtain, and they couldn't see it, and she thought it was me. She

looked at Ma as though she was wondering why she didn't hit me with a

poker, but she went on, and Polly said, 'wipe off your chin,' and then

the lady got through and got up, and told Ma it must be a great trial to

have an idiotic child, and then Ma she was mad and said it wasn't half

so bad as it was to be a kleptomaniac, and then the woman got up and

said she wouldn't stay no longer, and Pa said to me to take that parrot

out doors, and that seemed to make them all good natured again. Ma said

to take the parrot and give it to the poor. I took the cage and pointed

my finger at the parrot and it looked at the woman and said 'old

catamaran,' and the woman tried to look pious and resigned, but she

couldn't. As I was going out the door the parrot ruffed up his feathers

and said 'Dammit, set em up,' and I hurried out with the cage for fear

he would say something bad, and the folks all held up their hands and

said it was scandalous. Say, I wonder if a parrot can go to hell with

the rest of the community. Well, I put the parrot in the woodshed, and

after they all had their innings, except Pa, who acted as umpire, the

meeting broke up, and Ma says its the last time she will have that gang

at her house.

“That must have been where your Pa got his black eye,” said the grocery

man, as he charged the bunch of celery to the boy's Pa. “Did the

minister hit him, or was it one of the sisters?”

“O, he didn't get his black eye at prayer meeting!” said the boy, as he

took his mittens off the stove and rubbed them to take the stiffening

out. “It was from boxing. Pa told my chum and me that it was no harm to

learn to box, cause we could defend ourselves, and he said he used to be

a holy terror with the boxing gloves when he was a boy, and he has been

giving us lessons. Well, he is no slouch, now I tell you, and handles

himself pretty well for a church member. I read in the paper how Zack

Chandler played it on Conkling by getting Jem Mace, the prize fighter,

to knock him silly, and I asked Pa if he wouldn't let me bring a poor

boy who had no father to teach him boxing, to our house to learn to box,

and Pa said certainly, fetch him along. He said he would be glad to do

anything for a poor orphan. So I went down in the Third ward and got an

Irish boy by the name of Duffy, who can knock the socks off of any boy

in the ward. He fit a prize fight once. It would have made you laugh to

see Pa telling him how to hold his hands and how to guard his face. He

told Duffy not to be afraid, but strike right out and hit for keeps.

Duffy said he was afraid Pa would get mad if he hit him, and Pa said,

'nonsense, boy, knock me down if you can, and I will laugh ha! ha!'

Well, Duffy he hauled back and gave Pa one in the nose and another in

both eyes, and cuffed him on the ear and punched him in the stomach, and

lammed him in the mouth and made his teeth bleed, and then he gave him

a side-winder in both eyes, and Pa pulled off the boxing gloves and

grabbed a chair, and we adjourned and went down stairs as though there

was a panic. I haven't seen Pa since. Was his eye very black?”

“Black, I should say so,” said the grocery man. “And his nose seemed

to be trying to look into his left ear. He was at the market buying

beefsteak to put on it.”

“O, beef steak is no account. I must go and see him and tell him that an

oyster is the best thing for a black eye. Well, I must go. A boy has a

pretty hard time running a house the way it should be run,” and the boy

went out and hung up a sign in front of the grocery: “_Frowy Butter a

Speshulty_.”

End of Project Gutenberg's Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, by George W. Peck