HIS PA GOES TO THE EXPOSITION. THE BAD BOY ACTS AS GUIDE—THE CIRCUS STORY—THE OLD MAN WANTS TO SIT DOWN—TRIES TOEAT PANCAKES—DRINKS SOME MINERAL WATER—THE OLD MAN FALLSIN LOVE WITH A WAX WOMAN—A POLICEMAN INTERFERES—THE LIGHTSGO OUT—THE GROCERY-MAN DON’T WANT A CLERK.
“Well, everything seems to be quiet over to your house this week,” says the groceryman to the bad boy, as the youth was putting his thumb into some peaches through the mosquito netting over the baskets, to see if they were soft enough to steal, “I suppose you have let up on the old man, haven’t you?”
“O, no. We keep it right up. The minister of the church that Pa has joined says while Pa is on probation it is perfectly proper for us to do everything to try him, and make him fall from grace. The minister says if Pa comes out of his six months probation without falling by the wayside he has got the elements to make the boss christian, and Ma and me are doing all we can.”
“What was the doctor at your house for this morning?” asked the groceryman, “Is your Ma sick?”
“No, Ma is worth two in the bush. It’s Pa that ain’t well. He is having some trouble with his digestion. You see he went to the exposition with me as guide, and that is enough to ruin any man’s digestion. Pa is near-sighted, and he said he wanted me to go along and show him things. Well, I never had so much fun since Pa fell out of the boat. First we went in by the fountain, and Pa never had been in the exposition building before. Last year he was in Yourip, and he was astonished at the magnitude of everything. First I made him jump clear across the aisle there, where the stuffed tigers are, by the fur place. I told him the keeper was just coming along with some meat to feed the animals, and when they smelled the meat they just clawed things. He run against a show-case, and then wanted to go away.
“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 hehadbusted. 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.
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 STARTFOR THE COURT HOUSE PARK—HIS MA APPEARS ON THE SCENE—“IFYOU 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.”
Ma Appears on the Scene P066
“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.”
HIS PA AT THE REUNION. THE OLD MAN IN MILITARY SPLENDOR—TELLS HOW HE MOWED DOWN THE REBELS—“I AND GRANT”—WHAT IS ASUTLER?—TEN DOLLARS FOR PICKELS!—“LET US HANG HIM!”—THEOLD MAN ON THE RUN—HE STANDS UP TO SUPPER—THE BAD BOY ISTO 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 inaqua 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.”
Pa on the Run P071
“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 bay 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.”
THE BAD BOY IN LOVE—ARE YOU A CHRISTIAN?—NO GETTING TOHEAVEN ON SMALL POTATOES!—THE BAD BOY HAS TO CHEW COBS—MASAYS IT’S GOOD FOR A BOY TO BE IN LOVE—LOVE WEAKENS THE BADBOY—HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO GET MARRIED?—MAD DOG!—NEVEREAT 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.
He said it must have been a mistake of the boy that delivers groceries.
“Then you must hire the boy to make mistakes, for it has been so every time we have had sweet potatoes for five years,” said the boy. “And about green corn. You have a few ears stripped down to show how nice and plump it is, and if we order a dozen ears there are only two that have got any corn on at all, and Pa and Ma gets them, and the rest of us have to chew cobs. Do you hope to wear a crown of glory on that kind of corn?”
“O, such things will happen,” said the grocery man with a laugh, “But don’t let’s talk about heaven. Let’s talk about the other place. How’s things over to your house? And say, what’s the matter with you. You are all dressed up, and have got a clean shirt on, and your shoes blacked, and I notice your pants are not raveled out so at the bottoms of the legs behind. You are not in love are you?”
“Well, I should smile,” said the boy, as he looked in a small mirror on the counter, covered with fly specks. “A girl got mashed on me, and Ma says it is good for a boy who hasn’t got no sister, to be in love with a girl, and so I kind of tumbled to myself and she don’t go no where without I go with her. I take her to dancing school, and everywhere, and she loves me like a house afire. Say, was you ever in love? Makes a fellow feel queer, don’t it? Well sir, the first time I went home with her I put my arm around her, and honest it scared me. It was just like when you take hold of the handles of a lectric battery, and you can’t let go till the man turns the knob. Honest, I was just as weak as a cat. I thought she had needles in her belt and was going to take my arm away, but it was just like it was glued on. I asked her if she felt that way too, and she said she used to, but it was nothing when you got used to it. That made me mad. But she is older than me and knows more about it. When I was going to leave her at the gate, she kissed me, and that was worse than putting my arm around her. By gosh, I trembled all over just like I had chills, but I was as warm as toast. She wouldn’t let go for much as a minute, and I was tired as though I had been carrying coal up stairs.”
The Bad Boy and his Girl P074
“I didn’t want to go home at all, but she said it would be the best way for me to go home, and come again the next day, and the next morning I went to her house before any of them were up, and her Pa came out to let the cat in, and I asked him what time his girl got up, and he laffed and said I had got it bad, and that I had better go home and not be picked till I got ripe. Say, how much does it cost to get married?”
“Well, I should say you had got it bad,” said the grocery man, as he set out a basket of beets. “Your getting in love will be a great thing for your Pa. You won’t have any time to play any more jokes on him.”
“O, I guess we can find time to keep Pa from being lonesome. Have you seen him this morning? You ought to have seen him last night. You see, my chum’s Pa has got a setter dog stuffed. It is one that died two years ago, and he thought a great deal of it, and he had it stuffed, for a ornament.
“Well, my chum and me took the dog and put it on our front steps, and took some cotton and fastened it to the dog’s mouth so it looked just like froth, and we got behind the door and waited for Pa to come home from the theatre. When Pa started to come up the steps I growled and Pa looked at the dog and said, “Mad dog, by crimus,” and he started down the sidewalk, and my chum barked just like a dog, and I “Ki-yi’d” and growled like a dog that gets licked, and you ought to see Pa run. He went around in the alley and was going to get in the basement window, and my chum had a revolver with some blank cartridges, and we went down in the basement and when Pa was trying to open the window my chum began to fire towards Pa. Pa hollered that it was only him, and not a burglar, but after my chum fired four shots Pa run and climbed over the fence, and then we took the dog home and I stayed with my chum all night, and this morning Ma said Pa didn’t get home till four o’clock and then a policeman came with him, and Pa talked about mad dogs and being taken for a burglar and nearly killed, and she said she was afraid Pa had took to drinking again, and she asked me if I heard any firing of guns, and I said no, and then she put a wet towel on Pa’s head.”
“You ought to be ashamed,” said the grocery man “How does your Pa like your being in love with the girl? Does he seem to encourage you in it?”
“Oh, yes, she was up to our house to borry some tea, and Pa patted her on the cheek and hugged her and said she was a dear little daisy, and wanted her to sit in his lap, but when I wanted him to let me have fifty cents to buy her some ice cream he said that was all nonsense. He said: “Look at your Ma. Eating ice cream when she was a girl was what injured her health for life.” I asked Ma about it, and she said Pa never laid out ten cents for ice cream or any luxury for her in all the five years he was sparking her. She says he took her to a circus once but he got free tickets for carrying water for the elephant. She says Pa was tighter than the bark to a tree. I tell you its going to be different with me. If there is anything that girl wants she is going to have it if I have to sell Ma’s copper boiler to get the money, What is the use of having wealth if you hoard it up and don’t enjoy it? This family will be run on different principles after this, you bet. Say, how much are those yellow wooden pocket combs in the show case? I’ve a good notion to buy them for her. How would one of them round mirrors, with a zinc cover, do for a present for a girl? There’s nothing too good for her.”
HIS PA FIGHTS HORNETS—THE OLD MAN LOOKS BAD—THE WOODS OFWAUWATOSA—THE OLD MAN TAKES A NAP—“HELEN DAMNATION”—“HELL IS OUT FOR NOON”—THE LIVER MEDICINE—ITS WONDERFULEFFECTS—THE BAD BOY IS DRUNK!—GIVE ME A LEMON!—A SIGHT OFTHE COMET!—THE HIRED GIRL’S RELIGION.
“Go away from here now,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came into the store and was going to draw some cider out of a barrel into a pint measure that had flies in it. “Get right out of this place, and don’t let me see you around here until the health officer says you Pa has got over the small pox. I saw him this morning and his face is all covered with postules, and they will have him in the pest house before night. You git,” and he picked up a butter tryer and went for the boy who took refuge behind a barrel of onions, and held up his hands as though Jesse James had drawn a bead on him.
“O, you go and chase yourself. That is not small pox Pa has got. He had a fight with a nest of hornets,” said the boy.
“Hornets! Well, I’ll be cussed,” remarked the grocery man, as he put up the butter tryer, and handed the boy a slice of rotten muskmelon. “How in the world did he get into a nest of hornets? I hope you did not have anything to do with it.”
The boy buried his face in the melon, until he looked as though a yellow gash had been cut from his mouth to his ears, and after swallowing the melon, he said: “Well, Pa says I was responsible, and he says that settles it, and I can go my way and he will go his. He said he was willing to overlook everything I had done to make his life unbearable, but steering him onto a nest of hornets, and then getting drunk, was too much, and I can go.”
“What, you haven’t been drunk,” says the grocery man, “Great heavens, that will kill your poor old father.”
“O, I guess it won’t kill him very much. He has been getting drunk for twenty years, and he says he is healthier to-day than he ever was, since his liver has got to working again. You see, Monday was a regular Indian summer day, and Pa said he would take me and my chum out in the woods to gather hickory nuts, if we would be good. I said I would, and my chum said he would, and we got a couple of bags and went away out to Wauwatosa, in the woods. We clubbed the trees and got more nuts than anybody, and had a lunch, and Pa was just enjoying his relidgin first rate. While Pa was taking a nap under a tree, my chum and me looked around and found a hornets’ nest on the lower limb of the tree we were sitting under, and my chum said it would be a good joke to get a pole and run it into the hornet’s nest, and then run. Honest, I didn’t think about Pa being under the tree, and I went into a field and got a hop pole, and put the small end up into the nest, and gouged the nest a couple of times, and when the boss hornet came out of the hole and looked sassy, and then looked back in the hole and whistled to the other hornets to come out and have a circus, and they began to come out, my chum and me run and climbed over a fence, and got behind a pile of hop poles that was stacked up.”
Helen Damnation P079
“I guess the hornets saw my Pa just as quick as they got out of the nest, cause pretty soon we heard Pa call to ‘Helen Damnation,’ or some woman we didn’t know, and then he took his coat, that he had been using for a pillow, and whipped around, and he slapped hisself on the shoulders, and then took the lunch basket and pounded around like he was crazy, and bime-by he started on a run towards town, holding his pants up, cause his suspenders was hanging down on his hips, and I never see a fat man run so, and fan himself with a basket. We could hear him yell, ‘come on, boys. Hell is out for noon,’ and he went over a hill, and we didn’t see him any more. We waited till near dark because we was afraid to go after the bags of nuts till the hornets had gone to bed, and then we came home. The bags were awful heavy, and I think it was real mean in Pa to go off and leave us, and not help carry the bags.”
“I swan,” says the grocery man, “You are too mean to live. But what about your getting drunk?”
“O, I was going to tell you. Pa had a bottle of liver medicine in his coat pocket, and when he was whipping his hornets the bottle dropped out, and I picked it up to carry it home to him. My chum wanted to smell of the liver medicine, so he took out the cork and it smelled just like in front of a liquor store on East Water street, and my chum said his liver was bad, too, and he took a swaller, and he said he should think it was enough to cut a feller’s liver up in slices, but it was good, and then I had a peculiar feeling in my liver, and my chum said his liver felt better after he took a swaller, and and so I took a swaller, and it was the offulest liver remedy I ever tasted. It scorched my throat just like the diptheria, but it beats diptheria, or sore throat, all to pieces, and my chum and me laffed, we was so tickled. Did you ever take liver medicine? You know how it makes you feel as if your liver had got on top of your lights, and like you wanted to jump and holler. Well, sir, honest that liver medicine made me dance a jig on the viaduct bridge, and an old soldier from the soldiers’ home came along and asked us what was the matter, and we told him about our livers, and the liver medicine, and showed him the bottle, and he said he sposed he had the worst liver in the world, and said the doctors at the home, couldn’t cure him. It’s a mean boy that won’t help a nold vetran cure his liver, so I told him to try Pa’s liver remedy, and he took a regular cow swaller, and said, ‘here’s to your livers, boys.’ He must have a liver bigger nor a cow’s, and I guess it is better now.
“Then my liver begun to feel curus again, and my chum said his liver was getting torpid some more, and we both took another dose, and started home and we got generous, and give our nuts all away to some boys. Say, does liver medicine make a feller give away all he has got? We kept taking medicine every five blocks, and we locked arms and went down a back street and sung ‘O it is a glorious thing to be a pirut king,’ and when we got home my heart felt bigger nor a washtub and I thought p’raps my liver had gone to my head, and Pa came to the door with his face tied up in towels, and some yellow stuff on the towels that smelted like anarchy, and I slapped him on the shoulder and shouted, ’Hello, Gov., how’s your liver,’ and gave him the bottle, and it was empty, and he asked me if we had been drinking that medicine and he said he was ruined, and I told him he could get some more down to the saloon, and he took hold of my collar and I lammed him in the ear, and he bounced me up stairs, and then I turned pale, and had cramps, and I didn’t remember any more till I woke up and the doctor was over me, and Pa and Ma looked scared, and the Doc. had a tin thing like you draw water out of a country cistern, only smaller, and Ma said if it hadn’t been for the stomach pump she wouldn’t have had any little boy, and I looked at the knobs on Pa’s face and I laffed and asked Pa if he got into the hornets, too. Then the Doc. laffed, and Ma cried, and Pa swore, and I groaned, and got sick again, and then they let me go to sleep again, and this morning I had the offulest headache, and Pa’s face looks like he had fell on a picket fence. When I got out I went to my chum’s house to see if they had got him pumped out, and his Ma drove me out with a broom, and she says I will ruin every boy in the neighborhood. Pa says I was drunk and kicked him in the groin when he fired me up stairs, and I asked him how I could be drunk just taking medicine for my liver, and he said go to the devil, and I came over here. Say, give me a lemon to settle my stomach.”
“But, look-a-here,” says the grocery man, as he gave the boy a little dried up lemon, about as big as a prune, and told him he was a terror, “what is the matter of your eye winkers and your hair? They seem to be burned off.”
“O, thunder, didn’t Pa tell you about the comet exploding and burning us all? That was the worst thing since the flood, when Noar run the excursion boat from Kalamazoo to Mount Ararat. You see we had been reading about the comet, which is visible at four o’clock in the morning, and I heard Pa tell the hired girl to wake him and Ma up when she got up to set the pancakes and go to early mass so they could, see the comet. The hired girl is a Cathlick, and she don’t make no fuss about it, but she has got more good, square relidgin than a dozen like Pa. It makes a good deal of difference how relidgin affects different people, don’t it. Now Pa’s relidgin makes him wild, and he wants to kick my pants, and pull my hair, but the hired girl’s relidgin makes her want to hug me, if I am abused, and she puts anarchy on my bruises, and gives me pie. Pa wouldn’t get up at four o’clock in the morning to go to early mass, unless he could take a fish pole along and some angel worms. The hired girl prays when no one sees her but God, but Pa wants to get a church full of sisterin’, and pray loud, as though he was an auctioneer selling tin razors. Say, it beats all what a difference liver medicine has on two people, too. Now that hickory nut day, when me and my chum got full of Pa’s liver medicine, I felt so good natured I gave my hickory nuts away to the children, and wanted to give my coat and pants to a poor tramp, but my chum, who ain’t no bigger’n me, got on his ear and wanted to kick the socks off a little girl who was going home from school. It’s queer, ain’t it. Well, about the cornet. When I heard Pa tell the hired girl to wake him and Ma up, I told her to’ wake me up about half an hour before she waked Pa up, and then I got my chum to stay with me, and we made a comet to play on Pa, you see my room is right over Pa’s room, and I got two lengths of stove pipe and covered them all over with phosphorus, so they looked just as bright at as a comet. Then we got two Roman candles and a big sky rocket, and we were going to touch off the Roman candles and the sky rocket just as Pa and Ma got to looking at the comet. I didn’t know that a sky rocket would kick back, did you? Well, you’d a dide to see that comet. We tied a piece of white rubber garden hose to the stove pipe for a tail and went to bed, and when the girl woke us up we laid for Pa and Ma. Pretty soon we heard Pa’s window open, and I looked out, and Pa and Ma had their heads and half their bodies out of the window. They had their night shirts on and looked just like the pictures of Millerites waiting for the world to come to an end. Pa looked up and seed the stove pipe and he said:
“Hanner, for God’s sake, look up there. That is the damest comet I ever see. It is as bright as day. See the tail of it. Now that is worth getting up to see.”
“Just then my chum lit the two Roman candles and I touched off the rocket, and that’s where my eye winkers went. The rocket busted the joints of the stove pipe, and they fell down on Pa, but Ma got her head inside before the comet struck, and wasn’t hurt, but one length of stove pipe struck Pa endways on the neck and almost cut a biscuit out of him, and the fire and sparks just poured down in his hair, and burned his night shirt. Pa was scart. He thought the world was coming to an end, and the window came down on his back, and he began to sing, “Earth’s but a desert drear, Heaven is my home.” I see he was caught in the window, and I went down stairs to put out the fire on his night shirt, and put up the window to let him in, and he said, “My boy, your Ma and I are going to Heaven, but I fear you will go to the bad place,” and I told him I would take my chances, and he better put on his pants if he was going anywhere that there would be liable to be ladies present, and when he got his head in Ma told him the world was not coming to an end, but somebody had been setting off fireworks, and she said she guessed it was their dear little boy, and when I saw Pa feeling under the bed for a bed slat I got up stairs pretty previous now, and don’t you forget it, and Ma put cold cream on where the sparks burnt Pa’s shirt, and Pa said another day wouldn’t pass over his head before he had me in the Reform School. Well, if I go to the Reform School, somebody’s got to pay attention, you can bet your liver. A boy can’t have any fun these days without everybody thinks he is a heathen. What hurt did it do to play comet? It’s a mean father that wont stand a little scorchin’ in the interests of science.”
The boy went out, scratching the place where his eye winkers were, and then the grocery man knew what it was that caused the fire engines to be out around at four o’clock in the morning, looking for a fire.
HIS PA GOES HUNTING. MUTILATED JAW—THE OLD MAN HAS TAKEN TOSWEARING AGAIN—OUT WEST DUCK SHOOTING—HIS COAT-TAIL SHOTOFF—SHOOTS AT A WILD GOOSE—THE GUN KICKS!—THROWS A CHAIRAT HIS SON—THE ASTONISHED SHE DEACON.
“What has your Pa got his jaw tied up for, and what makes his right eye so black and blue,” asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as the boy came to bring some butter back that was strong enough to work on the street. “You haven’t hurt your poor old Pa, have you?”
“O, his jaw is all right now. You ought to have seen him when the gun was engaged in kicking him,” says the boy as he set the butter plate on the cheese box.
“Well, tell us about it. What had the gun against your Pa? I guess it was the son-of-a-gun that kicked him,” said the grocery man, as he winked at a servant girl who came in with her apron over her head, after two cents worth of yeast.
“I’ll tell you, if you will keep watch down street for Pa. He says he is dammed if he will stand this foolishness any longer.”
“What, does your father swear, while he is on probation?”
“Swear! Well, I should cackle. You ought to have heard him when he come to, and spit out the loose teeth. You see, since Pa quit drinking he is a little nervous, and the doctor said he ought to go out somewhere and get bizness off his mind, and hunt ducks, and row a boat, and get strength, and Pa said shooting ducks was just in his hand, and for me to go and borrow a gun, and I could go along and carry game. So I got a gun at the gun store, and some cartridges, and we went away out west on the cars, more than fifty miles, and stayed two days. You ought to seen Pa. He was just like a boy that was sick, and couldn’t go to school. When we got out by the lake he jumped up and cracked his heels together, and yelled. I thought he was crazy, but he was only cunning. First I scared him nearly to death by firing off the gun behind him, as we were going along the bank, and blowing off a piece of his coat-tail. I knew it wouldn’t hurt him, but he turned pale and told me to lay down that gun, and he picked it up and carried it the rest of the way, and I was offul glad cause it was a heavy gun. His coat-tail smelled like when you burn a rag to make the air in the room stop smelling so, all the forenoon. You know Pa is a little near sighted but he don’t believe it, so I got some of the wooden decoy ducks that the hunters use, and put them in the lake, and you ought to see Pa get down on his belly and crawl through the grass, to get up close to them.
“He shot twenty times at the wooden ducks, and wanted me to go in and fetch them out, but I told him I was no retriever dog. Then Pa was mad, and said all he brought me along for was to carry game, and I had come near shooting his hind leg off, and now I wouldn’t carry ducks. While he was coaxing me to go in the cold water without my pants on, I heard some wild geese squawking, and then Pa heard them, and he was excited. He said you lay down behind the muskrat house, and I will get a goose. I told him he couldn’t kill a goose with that fine shot, and I gave him a large cartridge the gun store man loaded for me, with a handful of powder in, and I told Pa it was a goose cartridge, and Pa put it in the gun. The geese came along, about a mile high, squawking, and Pa aimed at a dark cloud and fired. Well, I was offul scared, I thought I had killed him.”