0152
{Illustration: The Buffaloes Licked Pa's Bald Head—Pa Began to Pray.}
“Got any trailing dogs?”
“What you want trailing dogs for?” asked the ranchman. “What you want is a bath. Have any luck this morning buffaloing?”
“Well I guess yes,” said pa, as he dropped the peck measure, and got out a revolver and asked for more cartridges. “I put twelve bullets into that bull's carcass when he was charging on me, and how he carried them away is more than I know. Get me some dogs and a Winchester rifle and I will follow him till he drops in his tracks. That bull is my meat, you hear me?” and Pa bent over and looked at his chewed clothes.
“You don't mean to tell me the bull charged on you and didn't kill you?” said the ranchman, winking at the hired man. “How did you keep from being gored?”
“Well it takes a pretty smart animal to get the best of me,” said pa, looking wise. “You see, when the bull came over the hill I gave him a couple of shots, one in the eye and another in the chest, but he came on, with his other eye flashing fire, and the hair on his head and on his hump sticking up like a porcupine, and the whole herd followed, bellowing and fairly shaking the earth, but I kept my nerve. I shot the bull full of lead, and he tottered along towards me, bound to have revenge, but just as he was going to gore me with his wicked horns I caught hold of the long hair on his head and yelled 'Get out of here, condemn you,' and I looked him in the one eye, like this,” and Pa certainly did look fierce, “and he threw up his head, with me hanging to his hair, and when I came down I kicked him in the ribs and he gave a grunt and a mournful bellow, as though he was all in, and was afraid of me, and went off over the hill, followed by the herd, scared to death at a man that was not afraid to stand his ground against the fiercest animal that ever trod the ground. Now, come on and help me find the carcass.” Pa looked as though he meant it.
“Well, you are a wonder,” said the ranch-man, looking at Pa in admiration. “I have seen men before that could lie some, but you have got Annanias beaten a block. Now we will go to the house and settle this thing, and I will send my trusty henchmen out henching after your bull.”
Then we went to the house and got dinner, and the men drove up the buffalo into the barnyard and fed them hay, and we went out and played with the buffaloes, and Pa found his bull hadn't a scratch on him, and that he would lean up against Pa and rub against him just like he was a fencepost.
The ranchman told Pa they had been stringing him, and that the animals were so tame you could feed them out of your hand, and that he had been shooting blank cartridges, and the only thing he regretted was that Pa would lie so before strangers. Then pa bought the herd for the show, and next year Pa will show audiences how he can tame the wildest of the animal kingdom, so they will eat out of his hand.
The Bad Boy and His Pa Return to the Circus to Find They Have Been Quite Forgotten—The Fat Lady and the Bearded Woman Give Pa the Cold Shoulder—Pa Finally Makes Himself Recognized and Attends the Last Performance of the Season.
We arrived from the far west and struck the show at Indianapolis, where it was playing its last date of the season, before going to winter quarters. It was a sad home coming, 'cause the animals and the performers had forgotten us, and we had to be introduced to everybody.
We arrived about noon and while I stayed down town to get a shine, Pa took a street car and went right up to the lot, and the crowd was around the ticket wagon getting ready to go in. Pa went up to the ticket taker at the entrance and said, “hello, Bill,” and was going to push right in, when Bill said that was no good, and there couldn't any old geezer play the “hello Bill” business on him.
A couple of bouncers took Pa by the elbows and fired him out, and the crowd laughed at pa, and told him to go and buy a ticket like a man, and Pa told the bouncers he would discharge them on the spot. Pa went to the manager's tent and complained that he had been fired out, and the manager said that was perfectly proper, unless he had a ticket, and he told Pa to get out. Pa told them who he was, but they wouldn't believe him. You see pa's face was all red and sore where the buffaloes had licked him, and the buffaloes had licked all the hair dye out of his hair and whiskers, and they were as white as the driven snow. Pa looked 20 years older than when he went west. While they were arguing about Pa and examining him to see if he had smallpox, I came up and Pa saw me and he said, “Hennery, ain't I your pa?” and I said “you can search me, that's what they always said,” and then I identified pa, and they all shook hands with him, and he reported about the trip to the west, and what talent he had engaged for the wild west department for next year. Then we all went into the tent. I guess everybody was mad and excited, 'cause the show was going to close, and the salaries stop, as some of the performers were crying, and everybody was packed up, and all were paying borrowed money.
0160
{Illustration: A Couple of Bouncers Took Pa by the Elbow and Fired Him Out.}
Pa went up to the freak's platform and tapping the fat lady on the shoulder he said, “Hello, you seem to be taking on flesh, now that the show is going to close, and you ought to have got that flesh on earlier in the season.”
I shall never forget the scene. The fat lady did not recognize pa, but thought he was just an ordinary old Hoosier trying to take liberties with her, and she kicked pa's feet out from under him, and pulled him down across her lap and with her big fat hand she gave him a few spanks that made Pa see stars, and then cuffed pa's ears, and let him up. He went over to the bearded woman for sympathy, asked her how she had got along without him so long; and she got mad too and swatted Pa with her fist, and yelled for help. The giant came and was going to break Pa in two, and Pa asked the giant what it was to him, and he said the bearded woman was his wife, and that they were married the week before at Toledo. The giant lifted Pa one with his hind foot, and Pa got down off the platform, and he told them that was their last season with the show, when they had no respect for the general manager.
Then they all found out who Pa was, and apologized and tried to square themselves, but Pa was hot enough to boil over, and we went off to see the animals.
Say, there wasn't a single animal that would have Pa around. The zebras kicked at pa, the lions roared and sassed him, the hyenas snarled and howled, the wolves looked ugly, and the tigers acted as though they wanted to get him in the cage and tear out his tenderloin; the elephants wanted to catch Pa and walk on his frame. The only friends Pa seemed to have was the sacred bull and cow, who let him come near them, and when they began to lick pa's hand he remembered his experience with the buffaloes, and he drew away to the monkey cages. The ourang outang seemed to look on pa as an equal, and the monkeys treated me like a long lost brother.
It was the saddest home coming I ever participated in, and when the performance began Pa and I went and sat on the lowest seat near the ring, and the performers guyed Pa for a Hoosier, and the lemonade butchers tried to sell Pa lemonade and peanuts, which was the last hair, until a fakir tried to get Pa to bet on a shell game, and that was the limit.
Pa got up with a heavy heart, and started to go into the dressing room, and was arrested by one of the detectives, and put out under the canvas, and we went down town almost heartbroken, I told Pa to go to a barber shop and have his hair and whiskers colored black again, and put on his old checkered vest, and big plug hat, and two-pound watch chain, and they would all know him. So Pa had his hair and whiskers colored natural, and dressed up in the old way, and at evening we went back and stood around the tent, and everybody took off their hats to him, and when we went into the show at night everybody was polite, the freaks wanted Pa to sit on the platform with them, and the animals came off their perch, and treated Pa like they used to, and he was himself again.
He went around the big tent and watched the last performance of the season, and complimented the performers, went into the dressing room and jollied the members of the staff, and when the performance was over, and the audience had gone, all the managers and everybody connected with the show gathered in the ring to bid each other good bye, and make presents to each other. Everybody made speeches congratulating the management and all who had helped to make the show a success, and they all joined hands around the ring and sang “Auld Lang Sine,” the animals in the next tent joining in the chorus.
The lights were lowered, and the canvas-men took down the tents and loaded them on the cars for home. We went down to the hotel and the managers listened to the reading of a statement from the treasurer showing how much money we had made, Pa drew his share of the profits, and we took a train for home.
At breakfast the next morning in the dining car, going into Chicago, Pa said to me, “Hennery, we have had the most exciting five months of my life. The circus business is just like any other business. If you make good and we are ahead of the game, it is respectable, but if you run behind and have to deal with the sheriff, you are suspected of being crooked. Make the people laugh and forget their troubles, and you are a benefactor, but if your show is so bad that it makes them kick and find fault, and wish they had stayed at home, you might as well put crape on the grand entrance, and go out of the business. The animals in a show are just like the people we meet in society. If you put on a good front, and act as though you were the whole thing, they respect you, and allow you to stay on the earth, but if you are changeable, and look different from your customary appearance, and come up to the cage in a frightened manner, they pipe you off and give you the ha, ha! See? Now we will go home and get acquainted.”
“Well, pa,” said I, looking him straight in the eye, “where are we going next?”
The Bad Boy Calls on the Old Groceryman and Gets Acquainted with His New Dog—Off Again to See America.
The old groceryman was sitting in the old grocery one fine spring morning looking over his accounts, as they were written on a quire of brown wrapping paper with a blunt lead pencil, and wondering where he could go to collect money to pay a note that was due at the bank at noon on that day. He was looking ten years older than he did the year before when the Bad Boy had played his last trick on the old man, and gone abroad to chaperone his sick father, in a search for health and adventure. The old man had missed the boy around the grocery, and with no one to keep his blood circulating, and his temperature occasionally soaring above the normal, he had failed in health, and had read with mixed feelings of joy, fear and resentment that the Bad Boy and his dad had arrived home, and he knew it could not be long before the boy would blow in, and he was trying to decide whether to meet the boy cheerfully and with a spirit of resignation, or to meet him with a club, whether to give him the glad hand, or form himself into a column of fours to drive him out when he came.
He had accumulated a terrier dog since the boy went away, to be company for the old singed cat, to hunt rats in the cellar, and to watch the store nights. The dog was barking down cellar, and the old man went down the rickety stairs to see what the trouble was, and while he was down there helping the dog to tree a rat under a sack of potatoes, the Bad Boy slipped into the store, and finding the old man absent, he crawled under the counter, curled up on a cracker box, and began to snore as the old man came up the stairs, followed by the dog, with a rat in his mouth. The old man heard the snore, and wondered if he had been entertaining a tramp unawares, when the dog dropped the rat and rushing behind the counter began to growl, and grabbed the Bad boy by the seat of his trousers and gave him a good shaking, while the boy set up a yell that caused the plaster to fall, and the old man to almost faint with excitement, and he went to the door to call a policeman, when the boy kicked the dog off, and raised up from behind the counter, causing the old cat to raise her back and spit cotton, and as the old man saw the Bad Boy he leaned against the show case and a large smile came over his face, and he said: “Gee whiz, where did you get on?”
“The porter was not in, so I turned in in the first lower berth I came to,” said the Bad Boy, as he jumped over the counter and grabbed the old man by the arm and shook his hand until it ached. “Introduce me to your friend, the dog, who seems to have acquired an appetite for pants,” and the Bad Boy got behind the old man and kicked at the dog, who was barking as though he had a cat on the fence.
0175
{Illustration: “Dog Does Kinder Act as Though he Had Something on His Mind."}
“Get out, Tiger,” said the old man, as he pushed the dog away. “You have got to get used to this young heathen,” and he hugged the bright-looking, well-dressed boy as though he was proud of him.
“What are good fat rats selling for now?” asked the boy, as his eye fell on the rat the terrier had brought out of the cellar. “I did not know you had added a meat market to your grocery. Now, in Paris the rat business is a very important industry, but I didn't know the people ate them here. What do you retail them at?”
“O, get out, I don't sell rats,” said the old man, indignantly. “I got this dog for company, in your place, and he has proved himself more useful than any boy I ever saw. Say, come and sit down by the stove, and tell me all about your trip, as your letters to me were not very full of information. How is your father's health?”
“Dad is the healthiest man in America,” said the boy, as he handed the old man a Turkish cigarette, with a piece of cheese under the tobacco about half an inch from where the old man lighted it with a match. “Dad is all right, except his back. He slept four nights with a cork life preserver strapped to, his back, coming over, and he has got curvature of the spine, but the doctor has strapped a board to dad's back, and says when his back warps back to fit the board he will be sound again.”
“Say, this is a genuine Turkish cigarette, isn't it,” said the old man, as he puffed away at it, and blew the smoke through his nose.
“I have always wanted to smoke a genuine, imported cigarette. Got a flavor something like a Welsh rabbit, ain't it?” and the old man looked at the cigarette where the frying cheese was soaking through the paper.
“Gee, but I can't go that,” and he threw it away and looked sea sick.
“Turks always take cheese in their cigarettes,” said the Bad Boy. “They get a smoke and food at the same time. But if you feel sick you can go out in the back yard and I will wait for you.”
“No, I will be all right,” said the old man, as he got up to wait on a customer. “Here, try a glass of my cider,” and he handed the boy a dirty glass half filled with cider which the boy drank, and then looked queer at the old man.
“Tastes like it smells going through the oil belt in Indiana,” said the boy. “What's in it?”
“Kerosene,” said the old man. “The Turks like kerosene in their cider. They get drink and light, if they touch a match to their breath. Say, that makes us even. Now, tell me, what country did you dad get robbed the most in while you were abroad?”
“Well, it was about a stand off,” said the boy, as he made a slip noose on the end of a piece of twine, and was trying to make a hitch over the bob tail of the groceryman's dog, with an idea of fastening a tomato can to the string a little later, and turning the dog loose. “Do you know,” said he to the old man, “that I think it is wrong to cut off a dog's tail, cause when you tie a tin can to it you feel as though you were taking advantage of a cripple.
“Well, all the countries we visited robbed dad of all the money he had, one way of another, sooner or later; even our own country, when we arrived in New York, took his roll for duty on some little things he smuggled, but I think the combination of robbers at Carlsbad stuck together and got the goods off dad in the most systematic manner. Some way they got news when we arrived, of the exact amount of money dad had got out of the bank, and before we had breakfast the fakers had divided it up among themselves, and each one knew just what was going to be his share, and it was just like getting a check from home for them. If we were going there again we would give the money to some particular faker to divide with the rest, and then take a few swallows of their rotten egg water, and get out.
“Say, did you ever eat a piece of custard pie made out of stale eggs? Well, that is just about the same as the Carlsbad water, only the water is not baked with a raw crust on the bottom. But the doctor dad consulted was the peach. Dad asked him how much of the water he ought to drink, and the doctor held a counsel with himself, and said dad might drink all he could hold, and when dad asked him how much his charges were he said, 'Oh, wait till you are cured.' So dad thought he was not going to charge for his advice, but after we had drank the water for ten days, and dad was so weak he couldn't brush the flies off his bald spot, we decided to go to rest cure, and when we had our tickets bought the doctor attached our baggage, and had a bill against dad for four hundred and sixty dollars for consultations, operations, advice, board and borrowed money, and he had a dozen witnesses to prove every item. Dad paid it, but we are going there once more with a keg of dynamite for that doctor. But dad thinks he got the worth of his money.
“You remember before he went away he thought the doctors who operated on him for that 'pendecitus' left a monkey wrench in him when they sewed him up. Well, after he began to drink that water he found iron rust on the towels when he took a bath, and he believes the monkey wrench was sweat out of him. Say, does your dog like candy?”
“O, yes, he eats a little,” said the grocery-man, and the boy tossed a piece of candy such as he gave the King of Spain, with cayenne pepper in it, to the dog, which swallowed it whole, and the old man said, “Now, I suppose your father is cured, you will stay at home for awhile, and settle down to decent citizenship, and take an active part in the affairs of your city and state? Gee, but what is the matter with the dog?” added the old man, as the dog jumped up on all fours, looked cross-eyed, and tried to dig a hole in his stomach with his hind leg.
“O, no, we shall never stay home much more,” said the Bad Boy, getting up on a barrel and pulling his feet up to get away from the dog, which was beginning to act queer. “You see, dad got cured all right, of a few diseases that were carrying him off, but he has taken the 'jumps,' a disease that is incurable. When a man has the 'jumps' he can't stay long in one place, but his life after taking the disease is one continual round of packing up and unpacking. His literature is time cards and railroad guides, and his meals are largely taken at railroad eating houses, sitting on a stool, and his sleep is uncertain cat naps. Say, that dog acts as though the mouthful he took out of my pants under the counter didn't agree with him,” added the boy, as the dog rolled over and tried to stand on his head.
“Dog does act kinder like he had something on his mind,” said the old man, as he got out of the dog's way, so he could do his acrobatic stunt. “Where is your dad going next trip? Seems as though he would want to stay home long enough to change his shirt.”
“Don't have to change your shirt when you travel,” said the boy, as he slipped an imitation snake into the side pocket of the old groceryman's sack coat. “We are going to see all the world, now that we have started in the traveling industry, but our next move will be chasing ourselves around our own native land. Say, if you have never been vaccinated against mad dog, you better take something right now, for that dog is mad, and in about two minutes he is going to begin to snap at people, and there is no death so terrible as death from a mad dog bite. Gee, but I wouldn't be in your for a million dollars.” And the boy stood upon the barrel, and was beginning to yell “mad dog,” when the old man asked what he could take to make him immune from the bite of a mad dog.
“Eat a bottle of horseradish,” said the boy, as he reached over to the shelves and got a bottle, and pulled the cork. “Eminent scientists agree that horseradish is the only thing that will get the system in shape to withstand and throw off the mad dog virus,” and he handed the old man the bottle and he began to eat it, and cry, and choke, and the boy got down from the barrel and let the dog out doors, and he made a bee line for the lake.
“He's a water dog all right,” said the boy, and as a servant girl came in to buy some soap, and saw the old man eating raw horseradish and choking and looking apoplectic, she asked what was the matter with the old man, and a boy said a mad dog just escaped from the store, and that the old man had shown signs of madness ever since; the girl gave a yell and rushed out into the world without her soap. “Let this be a lesson to you to be kind to dumb animals,” said the boy to the old man, as he finished the bottle of horseradish, and put his hands on his stomach.
“Write to me, won't you?” said the old groceryman, “and may the fiercest grizzly bear get you, and eat you, condemn you,” and the old man opened the door and pointed to the street.
“Sure,” said the Bad Boy. “I will write you but beware of the dog. Good-bye. You are a good thing. Push yourself along,” and the Bad Boy went out to pack up for another journey.
The Bad Boy Relates the Automobile Ride He and Dad Had—They Sneak Out of Town.
“Give me a package of your strongest breakfast food, and a big onion,” said the Bad Boy, as he came into the grocery, looking as weak as a fever convalescent, “and I want to eat the onion right now.”
“Well, that is a combination, sure enough,” said the old groceryman, as he wrapped a package of breakfast food in a paper and watched the boy rub half an onion on a salt bag, and eat it greedily. “What is the matter with you to look so sick, and eat raw onion before breakfast?”
“Oh, it is this new-fashioned way of living that is killing little Hennery. When I lived at home before we used to have sassidge and pancakes for breakfast, roast meat for dinner and cold meat for supper, and dad was healthy as a tramp, ma could dance a highland fling, I could play all kinds of games and jump over a high board fence when anybody was chasing me. Now we have some kind of breakfast food three times a day because ma reads the advertisements, and dad is so weak he has to be helped to dress, ma goes moping around like a fashionable invalid, I am so tired I can't hit a window with a snowball, and the dog that used to fight cats now wants to lay in front of the grate and wish he was dead. Gosh, but there ought to be a law that any man that invents a new breakfast food should be compelled to eat it. Gee, but that onion gives a man strength.”
0191
{Illustration: “Jerusalem, but You Are a Sight,” Said the old Grocery man.}
“I should think so,” said the old groceryman, as he took a rag and set it on fire and let the smoke purify the room. “But I suppose your folks are like a great many others who have quit eating meat on account of the meat trust, and are going to die in their tracks on health food. Is your dad going out today to get the fresh air and brace up for his next trip?”
“No, dad is going to stay in the house. He wants ma to get him a female trained nurse, but ma kicks. They had a trained nurse for a week, once, but ma had one of those little electric flash-lights that you touch a button and it lights up the room like a burglar was in the house, and she used to get up in the night and flash the light into dad's room. Dad always had nervous prostration after ma flashed the light, and the nurse fainted dead away, so ma and I are going to do the nursing until dad is strong enough to travel again, and then he and I skip.”
“Where are you going first?” asked the old groceryman, as he opened the door to let the odor of onion, and burned rag out of the room. “What kind of treatment do the doctors advise to bring the old man around so he will be himself again?”
“They want him to go where he can take baths, and gamble, and attend horse races, and go into fast society, and maybe have a fight or two so as to stir his blood, and we have decided to take him first to the hot springs and turn him loose, and we are packing up now and shall go next week. They tell me that at the Arkansaw Hot Springs you can get into any kind of a scrape you want, and you don't have to look around for trouble. It comes to you. Oh, we won't do a thing down there. I broke the news to dad last night, and he said that was good enough for him, and he has packed up his poker chips and some marked cards he used to win money with from the deacons in the church, and he wants to go as quick as possible. You will have to excuse me now, for I am going to take dad out in an automobile after breakfast to give him his first dose of excitement. I will make dad think that automobiling is a sport next to fox hunting, and I will drop in this afternoon and tell you about it,” and the Bad Boy took his breakfast food and went home.
“Jerusalem, but you are a sight,” said the groceryman late in the afternoon, as the bad boy came in with a pair of black goggles on, his coat torn down the back and his pants ripped up the legs. “What a time you must have had in the automobile. Did you run over anybody?”
“Everybody,” said the bad boy, as he pinned his trousers leg together with a safety pin. “There they go now with dad in a milk wagon. Say, these airships that run on the ground give a man all the excitement he needs.”
“Hurry up and tell me about your automobile ride,” said the groceryman as he brushed off the bad boy's clothes with an old blacking brush.
“Well, dad said he had never taken a ride in one of the devil wagons, though he had got a good deal of exercise the last year or two dodging them on the streets, but he said he was tickled to death to hear that I was an expert performer, and he would go out with me, and if he liked the sensation, he would buy one. The machine I hired was one of those doublets for two persons, one seat, you know, a runabout. It was a runabout all right. It run about eighteen miles in fifteen minutes. I got dad tucked in, and touched her on a raw spot, and we were off. I run her around town for a while on the streets that had no teams on, and dad was pleased. He said:
“'Hennery, I like a boy that knows something about machinery, and who knows what dingus to touch to make his machine do a certain thing, and I am proud of you.'
“We had to go through the business part of town, and dad looked around at the people on the streets that he knew, and he swelled up and tried to look as though he owned a brewery, and told me to let her out, and I thought if dad could stand it to let her out I could, so I pulled her open just as one of these station fruit venders with a hand cart was crossing the street. The cowcatcher in front caught the hand cart right in the middle and threw it into the air and it rained bananas and oranges, and the dago came down on his head and swore in Italian, and dad said, 'Good shot, Hennery,' and then the machine swung across the street and knocked the fender off a street car, and then I got her in the road straight and by gosh I couldn't stop her. Something had got balled up, and the more I touched things the faster she went. We frightened four teams and had three runaways, and the air seemed full of horses rearing up and drivers yelling for us to stop. One farmer with a load of hay would not give any of the road, and I guess his hay came in contact with the gasoline tank, for the hay took fire, his team ran away, and as we went over the hill I looked back and saw a fire engine trying to catch up with the red-hot load of hay, and the farmer had grabbed hold of a wire sign across the street and let the wagon run out from under him, and they had to take him down with a fire ladder.
0199
{Illustration: “It Rained Bananas and the Dago Came Down on His Head."}
“We kept going faster, and dad began to get frightened and asked me to slow up, but I couldn't. We must have got in the country about eight miles, and dad was getting scared, and his face was just the color of salt pork, and he said:
“'Hennery, this excursion is going to wind up in a tragedy, and if I die I want you to have a post-mortem examination made, just to see if I am right about those doctors leaving that monkey wrench in me. For heaven's sake make the machine jump that fence, for here comes a drove of cattle in the road, more'n a hundred horned steers, and we never can pass them alive.'”
“Gee, but when I saw those cattle ahead and the machine running away, I tried to pray, and then I steered her towards an old rail fence that looked as though it was rotten, and then there was a crash, the air was full of rails, and dad said, 'This is no hurdle race,' and we landed in a field where there was an old hard snow bank. She went up on the side, hit the frozen snow, turned a summersault, the gasoline tank exploded and I didn't remember anything till some farmers that were spreading manure in the field turned me over with a pitchfork and asked me who the old dead man was standing on his head in the snow bank with his plug hat around his neck. As soon as I came to I went to dad, and he was just coming out of a trance, and asked him if he didn't think a little excitement sort of made the sluggish blood circulate, and he looked at the blood on the snow, and said he thought there was no doubt about the circulation of his blood.
0202
{Illustration: “The farmer had graced hold of a wire sign across the street."}
“He got up, got his hat untangled, told the farmers he was obliged to them for their courtesy and then he called me one side and said:
“'Hennery, this attempt on your part to murder me was not the success that you expected, but you keep on and you will get me all right. Now, as a business man, I want to say we have got to get out of this town to-night or we will be arrested and sent to the penitentiary; besides, I will have to pay a thousand dollars damage at the least calculation. Get me a carriage for home, and you stay and set this machine on fire and skip back to town in time for the evening train south, and we will go where the climate is more genial.'
“Just then the steers we saw in the road came into the field through the fence we had broken, and when they smelled the blood they began to paw and beller, and look like they would run at dad, so the farmers got dad into a milk wagon that was going to town, and when the wagon started dad was pouring a cup of milk on him where the gasoline had scorched him when it exploded, and I walked in town helping the fellows drive the steers, and here I am, alive and ready to travel at 8 p. m.
0205
{Illustration: “Hennery, This Attempt on Your Part to Murder Me Was Not the Success You Expected."}
“If my chum comes around tell him I will write him from Hot Springs and give him the news.”
“If that don't beat anything I ever heard of,” said the old grocery man. “I have always been afraid of those automobiles, and when one of the horns blow I go in the first gate, say my prayers and wait for it to go by and run over some one farther down the block. Did your dad say anything about buying an automobile after he came to?”
“Yes, as I remember it, he said he would see me in h—— first, or something like that. He remarked, as he got in the milk wagon, that every man that owned an automobile ought to be examined by an insanity expert and sent to the penitentiary for letting concealed weapons carry him.
“Well, good-by, old man,” and the bad boy went limping out of the grocery to go home and tell his mother that he and dad had been scoring up for the good time they were going to have when they got out on the road for dad's health.
The Bad Boy Writes His Chum Not to Get So Gay—Dad's Experience with the Pecarries.
“Hot Springs, Ark.—My dear old chum: Dad and I got here three days ago, and have begun to enjoy life. We didn't leave home a minute too soon, as we would have been arrested for running over that banana peddler, and for arson in setting a load of hay on fire and destroying the farmer's pants in our automobile accident. Ma writes that a policeman and a deputy sheriff have camped on our front doorstep ever since we left, waiting for dad and I to show up. Dad wants me to tell you to notify the officers that they can go plum, as we shall never come back. Tell them we have gone to Panama, or Mexico, or any old place.
“By the way, kid, I shall have to give you a little fatherly advice. When dad and I were at the bank getting a wad to travel with, I asked one of the clerks how it was that the bank dispensed with your services, after you had been there nearly a year, and had got your salary up to $60 a month, and were just becoming worth your salt. He said you got too fresh, that every new responsibility that was put upon you caused your chest to swell, and that you walked around as though you were president of the bank, and that you got ashamed to carry your lunch to the bank, to eat it in the back room, but went out to a restaurant and ordered the things to eat that came under the 15-cent list, whether you liked the food or not, just to show off; and instead of quietly eating the wholesome lunch your mother put up for you, and being good natured, you ate the restaurant refuse, and got cross, and all for style, showing that you had got the big head; and that you demanded an increase of salary, like a walking delegate, and got fired, as you ought to have been; and now you are walking on your uppers, and are ashamed to look into the bank, which you think is going to fail because you have withdrawn your support. Dad arranged with the managers to take you back on probation, so you go and report for duty just as though you had been off on a vacation, and then you try and have some sense. Dad says you should get to the bank before you are expected, and stay a little while after it is time to quit, and don't watch the clock and get your coat on before it strikes, and don't make a center rush for the door, as though you were escaping from jail. Let those above you see that there is not enough for you to do, and that you are anxious to help all around the place. Look upon a bale of money just as you would look upon a bale of hay if you were working in a feed store, and don't look covetous upon a pile of bills, and wonder how much there is in it, and think how much you could buy with it if it was yours. It is just a part of the business, that pile of money is, and it is not your place to brood over it with venom in your eyes, or some day you will reach out and take a little, and look guilty, and if they don't find you out, you will take a bigger slice next time, and go and blow yourself for clothes as good as the president of the bank wears, and some night you will open a small bottle of wine, and put your thumbs in the arm-holes of your vest and imagine you are 'it,' and when you flash your roll to pay the score, the quiet man at another table in the saloon, who has been drinking pop, and whom you were sorry for, he looked so forlorn, will take you into the police station, and they will search you, and you will break down and blubber, and then it is all off, and the next day you will be before a judge, and your broken-hearted mother will be there trying to convince the judge that somebody must have put the money in your pocket to ruin you, some one jealous of your great success as a banker, but the judge will know how you came by the money, and you will go over the road, your mother goes to the grave, and your friends will say it is a pity about you.
0211
{Illustration: “Dad Sat in the Parlor with a Widow Until the Porter Had to Tell Him to Cut It Out.“}
“Men who employ boys know that half of them will never amount to a tinker's dam, a quarter of them will just pass muster, and if they can't run the place in a year they will find another job, and two out of the 20 will be what are needed in the business. The boy who is always looking for another job is the one that never finds one that suits him. The two boys out of the twenty will seem to look a little rustier each year as to clothes but their round, rosy faces will change from year to year, the jaws begin to show strength, the eyes get to looking through you, and the forehead seems to expand as the brain gets to working.
“The successful boys out of the bunch remind me of the automatic repeating rifle, that you put ten cartridges in and pull the trigger and shoot ten times with your eyes shut, if you want to, and it hits where you point it. Every time an employer pulls the trigger on a successful business boy, and a good idea of business is fired, the recoil puts a new idea into the chamber, and you pull again, and so on until the magazine of the brainy boy is emptied, when you load him up again, and he is ready for business, and the employer wouldn't be without him, and would not go back to the old-fashioned one-idea boy, that goes off half-cocked when not pointed at anything in particular, and whose ideas get stuck in the barrel and have to be pulled out with a wormer, and primed with borrowed powder, and touched off by the neighbors, most of whom get powder in their eyes, unless they look the other way when the useless employee goes off, for anything in the world. So, chum, you go back to the bank and become an automatic repeater in business, with ideas to distribute to others, instead of borrowing ideas, and you will own the bank some day.
0215
{Illustration: “I Got a Gambler to Look Cross at Dad."}
“Now, kid, you don't want to go peddling this around among the neighbors, but dad and I are having the time of our lives here, and since dad has begun to get acquainted with the ladies here at the hotel, and the millionaire sports, he is getting well, and acts like old times. He sat in the parlor of the hotel with a widow the first night until the porter had to tell him to cut it out. Say, I got asleep three or four times on a lounge in the parlor, waiting for dad to get to the 'continued in our next' in talking with that widow about his wealth, and his loneliness since ma died. He said he didn't know what he was worth, because he didn't pay any attention to any of his bonds and securities, except his Standard Oil stock, because the dividends on that stock came regular and increased a little every quarter.
Gee, but I wanted to tell her that all the interest he had in Standard Oil was a gallon kerosene can with a potato stuck in the spout, and when we went to bed I told him that woman's husband was behind the door of the parlor all the time listening, and he had a gun in his hip pocket, and would call him out for a duel the next morning, sure. Dad didn't sleep good that night, and the next morning I got a gambler to look cross at dad and size him up, and dad didn't eat any breakfast. After breakfast I had the hotel stenographer write a challenge to dad, and demand satisfaction for alienating the affections of his wife, and dad began to get weak in the knees. He showed me the challenge, and I told him the only way to do in this climate was to walk around and punch his cane on the floor, and look mad, and talk loud, and the challenger would know he was a fiery fighter, and would apologize, and dad walked around town and through the hotel office most of the day, fairly frothing at the mouth, and he thinks he has scared the challenger away, and, as the woman is gone, dad thinks he is a hero.
“But the worst thing has happened and it will take a week to grow new skin on dad's legs. He got acquainted with a bunch of men who were bear hunters and sports, and they talked of the bear shooting in Arkansas, and dad told about how he had killed tigers, lions, elephants and things until they thought he was great. Dad never saw one of those animals except in a menagerie, but when they suggested that he go with them on a bear hunt, he bit like a bass, and the whole bunch went off in a buckboard one morning with guns, lunches, hounds, bottles, and all kinds of ammunition. They didn't let me go but when the crowd came back about midnight, and they carried dad up to his room, and sent for a doctor, one of the horse race men who went along told me all about it.