“He said he traveled with a circus when he was young, and nobody knew the dangers of fooling around wild animals better than he did. He said once he fought with seven tigers and two Nubian lions for five hours, with Mabee’s old show. I asked him if that was afore he got religin, and he said never you mind. He is an old liar, even if he is converted. Ma says he never was with a circus, and she has known him ever since he wore short dresses. Wall, you would a dide to see Pa there by the furniture place, where they have got beautiful beds and chairs. There was one blue chair under a glass case, all velvet, and a sign was over it, telling people to keep their hands off. Pa asked me what the sign was, and I told him it said ladies and gentlemen are requested to sit in the chairs and try them. Pa climbed over the railing and was just going to sit down on the glass show case over the chair, when one of the walk-around fellows, with imitation police hats, took him by the collar and yanked him back over the railing, and was going to kick Pa’s pants. Pa was mad to have his coat collar pulled up over his head, and have the set of his coat spoiled, and he was going to sass the man, when I told Pa the man was a lunatic from the asylum, that was on exhibition, and Pa wanted to go away from there. He said he didn’t know what they wanted to exhibit lunatics for. We went up stairs to the pancake bazar, where they broil pancakes out of self rising flour, and put butter and sugar on them and give them away. Pa said he could eat more pancakes than any man out of jail, and wanted me to get him some. I took a couple of pancakes and tore out a piece of the lining of my coat and put it between the pancakes and handed them to Pa, with a paper around the pancakes. Pa didn’t notice the paper nor the cloth, and it would have made you laff to see him chew on them. I told him I guessed he didn’t have as good teeth as he used to, and he said never you mind the teeth, and he kept on until he swallowed the whole business, and he said he guessed he didn’t want any more. He is so sensitive about his teeth that he would eat a leather apron if anybody told him he couldn’t. When the doctor said Pa’s digestion was bad, I told him if he could let Pa swallow a seamstress or a sewing machine, to sew up the cloth, he would get well, and the Doc says I am going to be the death of Pa some day. But I thought I should split when Pa wanted a drink of water. I asked him if he would druther have mineral water, and he said he guessed it would take the strongest kind of mineral water to wash down them pancakes, so I took him to where the fire extinguishers are, and got him to take the nozzle of the extinguisher in his mouth, and I turned the faucet. I don’t think he got more than a quart of the stuff out of the saleratus machine down him, but he rared right up and said he be condamed if believed that water was ever intended to drink, and he felt as though he should bust, and just then the man who kicks the big organ struck up and the building shook, and I guess Pa thought he had busted. The most fun was when we came along to where the wax woman is. They have got a wax woman dressed up to kill, and she looks just as natural as if she could breathe. She had a handkerchief in her hand, and as we came along I told Pa there was a lady that seemed to know him. Pa is on the mash himself, and he looked at her and smiled and said good evening, and asked me who she was.
“I told him it looked to me like the girl that sings in the choir at our church, and Pa said corse it is, and he went right in where she was and said “pretty good show, isn’t it,” and put out his hand to shake hands with her, but the woman who tends the stand came along and thought Pa was drunk and said “old gentleman I guess you had better get out of here. This is for ladies only.”
“Pa said he didn’t care nothing about her lady’s only, all he wanted was to converse with an acquaintance, and then one of the policemen came along and told Pa he had better go down to the saloon where he belonged. Pa excused himself to the wax woman, and said he would see her later, and told the policeman if he would come out on the sidewalk he would knock leven kinds of stuffin out of him. The policeman told him that would be all right, and I led Pa away. He was offul mad. But it was the best fun when the lights went out. You see the electric light machine slipped a cog, or lost its cud, and all of a sudden the lights went out and it was as dark as a squaw’s pocket. Pa wanted to know what made it so dark, and I told him it was not dark. He said boy don’t you fool me. You see I thought it would be fun to make Pa believe he was struck blind, so I told him his eyes must be wrong. He said do you mean to say you can see, and I told him everything was as plain as day, and I pointed out the different things, and explained them, and walked Pa along, and acted just as though I could see, and Pa said it had come at last. He had felt for years as though he would some day lose his eyesight and now it had come and he said he laid it all to that condamned mineral water. After a little they lit some of the gas burners, and Pa said he could see a little, and wanted to go home, and I took him home. When we got out of the building he began to see things, and said his eyes were coming around all right. Pa is the easiest man to fool ever I saw.”
“Well, I should think he would kill you,” said the grocery man. “Don’t he ever catch on, and find out you have deceived him?”
“O, sometimes. But about nine times in ten I can get away with him. Say, don’t you want to hire me for a clerk?”
The grocery man said that he had rather have a spotted hyena, and the boy stole a melon and went away.
CHAPTER XIV.
HIS PA CATCHES OK—TWO DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE BATH ROOM— RELIGION CAKES THE OLD MAN’S BREAST—THE BAD BOY’S CHUM— DRESSED UP AS A GIRL—THE OLD MAN DELUDED—THE COUPLE START FOR THE COURT HOUSE PARK—HIS MA APPEARS ON THE SCENE—“IF YOU LOVE ME KISS ME”—MA TO THE RESCUE—“I AM DEAD AM I?” HIS PA THROWS A CHAIR THROUGH THE TRANSOM.
“Where have you been for a week back,” asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as the boy pulled the tail board out of the delivery wagon accidentally and let a couple of bushels of potatoes roll out into the gutter. “I haven’t seen you around here, and you look pale. You haven’t been sick, have you?”
“No, I have not been sick. Pa locked me up in the bath-room for two days and two nights, and didn’t give me nothing to eat but bread and water. Since he has got religious he seems to be harder than ever on me. Say, do you think religion softens a man’s heart, or does it give him a caked breast? I ’spect Pa will burn me at the stake next.”
The grocery man said that when a man had truly been converted his heart was softened, and he was always looking for a chance to do good and be kind to the poor, but if he only had this galvanized religion, this roll plate piety, or whitewashed reformation, he was liable to be a harder citizen than before. “What made your Pa lock you up in the bath-room on bread and water?” he asked.
“Well,” says the boy, as he eat a couple of salt pickles out of a jar on the sidewalk, “Pa is not converted enough to hurt him, and I knowed it, and I thought it would be a good joke to try him and see if he was so confounded good, so I got my chum to dress up in a suit of his sister’s summer clothes. Well, you wouldn’t believe my chum would look so much like a girl. He would fool the oldest inhabitant. You know how fat he is. He had to sell his bicycle to a slim fellow that clerks in a store, cause he didn’t want it any more. His neck is just as fat and there are dimples in it, and with a dress low in the neck, and long at the trail he looks as tall as my Ma. He busted one of his sister’s slippers getting them on, and her stockings were a good deal too big for him, but he tucked his drawers down in them and tied a suspender around his leg above the knee, and they stayed on all right. Well, he looked killin’, I should prevaricate, with his sister’s muslin dress on, starched as stiff as a shirt, and her reception hat with a white feather as big as a Newfoundland dog’s tail. Pa said he had got to go down town to see some of the old soldiers of his regiment, and I loafed along behind. My chum met Pa on the corner and asked him where the Lake Shore Park was. “She” said she was a stranger from Chicago, that her husband had deserted her and she didn’t know but she would jump into the lake. Pa looked in my chum’s eye and sized her up, and said it would be a shame to commit suicide, and
asked if she didn’t want to take a walk, My chum said he should titter, and he took Pa’s arm and they walked up to the lake and back. Well, you may talk about joining the church on probation all you please, but they get their arm around a girl all the same. Pa hugged my chum till he says he thought Pa would break his sister’s corset all to pieces, and he squeezed my chum’s hand till the ring cut right into his finger and he has to wear a piece of court plaster on it. They started for the Court House park, as I told my chum to do, and I went and got Ma. It was about time for the soldiers to go to the exposition for the evening bizness, and I told Ma we could go down and see them go by. Ma just throwed a shawl over her head and we started down through the park. When we got near Pa and my chum I told Ma it was a shame for so many people to be sitting around lally-gagging right before folks, and she said it was disgustin’, and then I pointed to my chum who had his head on Pa’s bosom, and Pa was patting my chum on the cheek, while he held his other arm around his waist, They was on the iron seat, and we came right up behind them and when Ma saw Pa’s bald head I thought she would bust. She knew his head as quick as she sot eyes on it.”
“My chum asked Pa if he was married, and he said he was a widower, He said his wife died fourteen years ago, of liver complaint. Well, Ma shook like a leaf, and I could hear her new teeth rattle just like chewing strawberries with sand in them. Then my chum put his arms around Pa’s neck and said, “If you love me kiss me in the mouth.” Pa was just leaning down to kiss my chum when Ma couldn’t stand it any longer, and she went right around in front of them, and she grabbed my chum by the hair and it all came off, hat and all; and my chum jumped up and Ma scratched him in the face, and my chum tried to get his hands in his pants pocket to get his handkerchief to wipe off the blood on his nose, and Ma she turned on Pa and he turned pale, and then she was going for my chum again when he said, “O let up on a feller,” and he see she was mad and he grabbed the hat and hair off the gravel walk and took the skirt of his sister’s dress in his hand and sifted out for home on a gallop, and Ma took Pa by the elbow and said, “You are a nice old party, ain’t you? I am dead, am I? Died of liver complaint fourteen years ago, did I? You will find an animated corpse on your hands. Around kissing spry wimmen out in the night, sir.” When they started home Pa seemed to be as weak as a cat, and couldn’t say a word, and I asked if I could go to the exposition, and they said I could, I don’t know what happened after they got home, but Pa was setting up for me when I got back and he wanted to know what I brought Ma down there for, and how I knew he was there.
“I thought it would help Pa out of the scrape and so I told him it was not a girl he was hugging at all, but it was my chum, and he laffed at first, and told Ma it was not a girl, but Ma said she knew a darn sight better. She guessed she could tell a girl.
“Then Pa was mad and he said I was at the bottom of the whole bizness, and he locked me up, and said I was enough to paralyze a saint. I told him through the key-hole that a saint that had any sense ought to tell a boy from a girl, and then he throwed a chair at me through the transom. The worst of the whole thing is my chum is mad at me cause Ma scratched him, and he says that lets him out. He don’t go into any more schemes with me. Well, I must be going. Pa is going to have my measure taken for a raw hide, he says, and I have got to stay at home from the sparing match and learn my Sunday school lesson.”
CHAPTER XV.
HIS PA AT THE REUNION. THE OLD MAN IN MILITARY SPLENDOR— TELLS HOW HE MOWED DOWN THE REBELS—“I AND GRANT”—WHAT IS A SUTLER?—TEN DOLLARS FOR PICKELS!—“LET US HANG HIM!”—THE OLD MAN ON THE RUN—HE STANDS UP TO SUPPER—THE BAD BOY IS TO DIE AT SUNSET.
“I saw your Pa wearing a red, white, and blue badge, and a round red badge, and several other badges, last week, during the reunion,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as the youth asked for a piece of codfish skin to settle coffee with. “He looked like a hero, with his old black hat, with a gold cord around it.”
“Yes, he wore all the badges he could get, the first day, but after he blundered into a place where there were a lot of fellows from his own regiment, he took off the badges, and he wasn’t very numerous around the boys the rest of the week. But he was lightning on the sham battle,” says the boy.
“What was the matter? Didn’t the old soldiers treat him well? Didn’t they seem to yearn for his society?” asked the grocery man, as the boy was making a lunch on some sweet crackers in a tin cannister.
“Well, they were not very much mashed on Pa. You see, Pa never gets tired telling us about how he fit in the army. For several years I didn’t know what a sutler was, and when Pa would tell about taking a musket that a dead soldier had dropped, and going into the thickest of the light, and fairly mowing down the rebels in swaths the way they cut hay, I thought he was the greatest man that ever was. Until I was eleven years old I thought Pa had killed men enough to fill the Forest Home cemetery. I thought a sutler was something higher than a general, and Pa used to talk about “I and Grant,” and what Sheridan told him, and how Sherman marched with him to the sea, and all that kind of rot, until I wondered why they didn’t have pictures of Pa on a white horse, with epaulets on, and a sword. One day at school I told a boy that my Pa killed more men than Grant, and the boy said he didn’t doubt it, but he killed them with commissary whiskey. The boy said his Pa was in the same regiment that my Pa was sutler of, and his Pa said my Pa charged him five dollars for a canteen of peppersauce and alcohol and called it whiskey. Then I began to enquire into it, and found out that a sutler was a sort of liquid peanut stand, and that his rank in the army was about the same as a chestnut roaster on the sidewalk here at home. It made me sick, and I never had the same respect for Pa after that. But Pa, don’t care. He thinks he is a hero, and tried to get a pension on account of losing a piece of his thumb, but when the officers found he was wounded by the explosion of a can of baked beans, they couldn’t give it to him. Pa was down town when the veterans were here, and I was with him, and I saw a lot of old soldiers looking at Pa, and I told him they acted as though they knew him, and he put on his glasses, and said to one of them, “How are you Bill?” The soldier looked at Pa and called the other soldiers, and one said, That’s the old duffer that sold me the bottle of brandy peaches at Chickamauga, for three dollars, and they eat a hole through my stummick. Another said, ‘He’s the cuss that took ten dollars out of my pay for pickles that were put up in aqua fortis. Look at the corps badges he has on.’ Another said, ‘The old whelp! He charged me fifty cents a pound for onions when I had the scurvy at Atlanta.’ Another said, ‘He beat me out of my wages playing draw poker with a cold deck, and the aces up his sleeve. Let us hang him.’ By this time Pa’s nerves got unstrung and began to hurt him, and he said he wanted to go home, and when we got around the corner he tore off his badges and threw them in the sewer, and said it was all a man’s life was worth to be a veteran now days. He didn’t go down town again till next day, and when he heard a band playing he would go around a block. But at the sham battle where there were no veterans hardly, he was all right with the militia boys, and told them how he did when he was in the army. I thought it would be fun to see Pa run, and so when one of the cavalry fellows lost his cap in the charge, and was looking for it, I told the dragoon that the pussy old man over by the fence had stolen his cap. That was Pa. Then I told Pa that the soldier on the horse said he was a rebel, and he was going to kill him. The soldier started after Pa with his sabre drawn, and Pa started to run, and it was funny you bet.”
“The soldier galloped his horse, and yelled, and Pa put in his best licks, and run up the track to where there was a board off the fence, and tried to get through, but he got stuck, and the soldier put the point of his sabre on Pa’s pants and pushed, and Pa got through the fence and I guess he ran all the way home. At supper time Pa would not come to the table, but stood up and ate off the side board, and Ma said Pa’s shirt was all bloody, and Pa said mor’n fifty of them cavalry men charged on him, and he held them at ba
y as long as he could, and then retired in good order. This morning a boy told him that I set the cavalry man onto him, and he made me wear two mouse traps on my ears all the forenoon, and he says he will kill me at sunset. I ain’t going to be there at sunset, and don’t you remember about it. Well, good bye. I have got to go down to the morgue and see them bring in the man that was found on the lake shore, and see if the morgue keeper is drunk this time.”
CHAPTER XVI.
THE BAD BOY IN LOVE—ARE YOU A CHRISTIAN?—NO GETTING TO HEAVEN ON SMALL POTATOES!—THE BAD BOY HAS TO CHEW COBS—MA SAYS IT’S GOOD FOR A BOY TO BE IN LOVE—LOVE WEAKENS THE BAD BOY—HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO GET MARRIED?—MAD DOG!—NEVER EAT ICE CREAM.
“Are you a christian?” asked the bad boy of the grocery man, as that gentleman was placing vegetables out in front of the grocery one morning.
“Well, I hope so,” answered the grocery man, “I try to do what is right, and hope to wear the golden crown when the time comes to close my books.”
“Then how is it that you put out a box of great big sweet potatoes, and when we order some, and they come to the table, they are little bits of things, not bigger than a radish? Do you expect to get to heaven on such small potatoes, when you use big ones for a sign?” asked the boy, as he took out a silk handkerchief and brushed a speck of dust off his nicely blacked shoes.
The grocery man blushed and said he did not mean to take any such advantage of his customers.
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