HE TURNS SUPE. THE BAD BOY QUITS JERKING SODA—ENTERS THEDRAMATIC PROFESSION—“WHAT'S A SUPER”—THE PRIVILEGES OP ASUPE'S FATHER—BEHIND THE SCENES—THE BAD BOY HAS PLAYEDWITH MC'CULLOUGH—“I WAS THE POPULACE”—PLAYS IT ON HISSUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER—“I PRITHEE, AU RESERVOIR, I GOHENS!”
“You look pretty sleepy,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the store yawning, and stretched himself out on the counter with his head on a piece of brown wrapping paper, in reach of a box of raisins, “what's the matter? Been sitting up with your girl all night?”
“Naw! I wish I had. Wakefullness with my girl is sweeter and more restful than sleep. No, this is the result of being a dutiful son, and I am tired. You see Pa and Ma have separated. That is, not for keeps, but Pa has got frightened about burglars, and he gets up into the attic to sleep. He says it is to get fresh air, but he knows better. Ma has got so accustomed to Pa's snoring that she can't go to sleep without it, and the first night Pa left she didn't sleep a wink, and yesterday I was playing on an old accordeon that I traded a dog collar for after our dog was poisoned, and when I touched the low notes I noticed Ma dozed oft to sleep, it sounded so much like Pa's snore, and last night Ma made me set up and play for her to sleep. She rested splendid, but I am all broke up, and I sold the accordeon this morning to the watchman who watches our block, It is queer what a different effect music will have on different people. While Ma was sleeping the sleep of innocence under the influence of my counterfeit of Pa's snore, the night watchman was broke of his rest by it, and he bought it of me to give it to the son of an enemy of his. Well, I have quit jerking soda.
“No you don't tell me,” said the grocery man as he moved the box of raisins out of reach. “You never will amount to anything unless you stick to one trade or profession. A rolling hen never catches the early angleworm.”
“O, but I am all right now. In the soda water business, there is no chance for genius to rise unless the soda fountain explodes. It is all wind, and one gets tired of the constant fizz. He feels that he is a fraud, and when he puts a little syrup in a tumbler, and fires a little sweetened wind and water in it until the soap suds fills the tumbler, and charges ten cents for that which only costs a cent, a sensitive soda jerker, who has reformed, feels that it is worse than three card monte. I couldn't stand the wear on my conscience, so I have got a permanent job as a super, and shall open the 1st of September.
“Say, what's a super? It isn't one of these free lunch places, that the mayor closes at midnight, is it?” and the grocery man looked sorry.
“O, thunder, you want salt on you. A super is an adjunct to the stage. A supe is a fellow that assists the stars and things, carrying chairs and taking up carpets, and sweeping the sand off the stage after a dancer has danced a jig, and he brings beer for the actors, and helps lace up corsets, and anything he can do to add to the effect of the play. Privately, now, I have been acting as a supe for a long time, on the sly, and my folks didn't know anything about it, but since I reformed and decided to be good, I felt it my duty to tell Ma and Pa about it. The news broke Ma all up, at first, but Pa said some of the best actors in this country were supes once, and some of them were now, and he thought suping would be the making of me. Ma thought going on the stage would be my ruination. She said the theater was the hotbed of sin, and brought more ruin than the church could head off. But when I told her that they always gave a supe two or three extra tickets for his family, she said the theatre had some redeeming features, and when I said my entrance upon the stage would give me a splendid opportunity to get the recipe for face powder from the actresses, for Ma, and I could find out how the actresses managed to get number four feet into number one shoes, Ma said she wished I would commence suping right off. Ma says there are some things about the theater that are not so alfired bad, and she wants me to get seats for the first comic opera that comes along. Pa wants it understood with the manager that a supe's father has a right to go behind the scenes to see that no harm befalls him, but I know what Pa wants. He may seem pious, and all that, but he likes to look at ballet girls better than any meek and lowly follower I ever see, and some day you will hear music in the air. Pa thinks theaters are very bad, when he has to pay a dollar for a reserved seat, but when he can get in for nothing as a relative of one of the 'perfesh', the theater has many redeeming qualities. Pa and Ma think I am going into the business fresh and green, but I know all about it. When I played with McCullough here once—
“Oh, what are you giving us,” said the grocery man in disgust, “when you played with McCullough! What did you do!”
“What did I do? Why, you old seed cucumber, the whole play centered around me. Do you remember the scene in the Roman forum, where McCullough addressed the populace of Rome? I was the populace. Don't you remember a small feller standing in front of the Roman orator taking it in; with a night shirt on, with bare legs and arms? That was me, and everything depended on me. Suppose I had gone off the stage at the critical moment, or laughed when I should have looked fierce at the inspired words of the Roman senator, it would have been a dead give away on McCollough. As the populace of Rome I consider myself a glittering success, and Mc took me by the hand when they carried Cæsar's dead body out, and he said, 'us three did ourselves proud.' Such praise from McCollough is seldom accorded to a supe. But I don't consider the populace of the imperial city of Rome my master piece. Where I excel is in coming out before the curtain between the acts, and unhooking the carpet. Some supes go out and turn their backs to the audience, showing patches on their pants, and rip up the carpet with no style about them, and the dust flies, and the boys yell 'supe,' and the supe gets nervous and forgets his cue, and goes off tumbling over the carpet, and the orchestra leader is afraid the supe will fall on him. But I go out with a quiet dignity that is only gained by experience, and I take hold of the carpet the way Hamlet takes up the skull of Yorick, and the audience is paralized. I kneel down on the carpet, to unhook it, in a devotional sort of a way that makes the audience bow their heads as though they were in church, and before they realize that I am only a supe I have the carpet unhooked and march out the way a 'Piscopal minister does when he goes out between the acts at church to change his shirt. They never 'guy' me, cause I act well my part. But I kick on holding dogs for actresses. Some supes think they are made if they can hold a dog, but I have an ambition that a pug dog will not fill. I held Mary Anderson's cud of gum once, while she went on the stage, and when she came off and took her gum her fingers touched mine and I had to run my fingers in my hair to warm them, like a fellow does when he has been snow-balling. Gosh, but she would freeze ice cream without salt. I shall be glad when the theatrical season opens, 'cause we actors get tired laying off.
“Well, I'd like to go behind the scenes with you some night,” said the grocery man, offering the bad boy an orange to get solid with him, in view of future complimentary tickets. “No danger, is there?”
“No danger if you keep off the grass. But you'd a dide to see my Sunday School teacher one Saturday night last summer. He keeps books in a store, and is pretty soon week days, but he can tell you more about Daniel in the lion's den on Sunday than anybody. He knew I was solid at the theater, and wanted me to get him behind the scenes one night, and another supe wanted to go to the sparring match, and I thought it wouldn't be any harm to work my teacher in, so I got him a job that night to hold the dogs for the Uncle Tom's show. He was in one of the wings holding the chains, and the dogs were just anxious to go on, and it was all my teacher could do to hold them. I told him to wind the chains around his wrists, and he did so, and just then Eliza began to skip across the ice, and we sicked the blood hounds on before my teacher could unwind the chains from his wrists, and the dogs pulled him right out on the stage, on his stomach, and drawed him across, and he jerked one dog and kicked him in the stomach, and the dog turned on my teacher and took a mouthful of his coat tail and shook it, and I guess the dog got some meat, anyway the teacher climbed up a step ladder, and the dogs treed him, and the step ladder fell down, and we grabbed the dogs and put some court plaster on the teacher's nose, where the fire extinguisher peeled it, and he said he would go home, cause the theater was demoralizing in its tendencies.”
The Sunday School Teachers First Appearance on Stage 140
“I spose it was not right, but when the teacher stood up to hear our Sunday School lesson the next day, cause he was tired where the dog bit him, I said 'sick-em,' in a whisper, when his back was turned, and he jumped clear over to the Bible class, and put his hands around to his coat tail as though he thought the Uncle Tom's Cabin party were giving a matinee in the church. The Sunday school lesson was about the dog's licking the sores of Lazarus, and the teacher said we must not confound the good dogs of Bible time with the savage beasts of the present day, that would shake the daylights out of Lazarus and make him climb the cedars of Lebanon quicker than you could say Jack Robinson, and go off chewing the cud of bitter reflection on Lazarus' coat tail. I don't think a Sunday school teacher ought to bring up personal reminiscences before a class of children, do you? Well, some time next fall you put on a clean shirt and a pair of sheet iron pants, with stove legs on the inside, and I will take you behind the scenes to see some good moral show. In the meantime, if you have occasion to talk with Pa, tell him that Booth, and Barrett, and Keene commenced on the stage as supes, and Salvini roasted peanuts in the lobby of some theater. I want our folks to feel that I am taking the right course to become a star. I prytheeau reservoir. I go hens! but to return. Avaunt!” And the bad boy walked out on his toesa laBooth.
UNCLE EZRA PAYS A VISIT—UNCLE EZRA CAUSES THE BAD BOY TOBACKSLIDE—UNCLE EZRA AND THE OLD MAN WERE BAD PILLS—THEIRRECORD IS AWFUL—KEEPING UNCLE EZRA ON THE RAGGED EDGE—THEBED SLATS FIXED—THE OLD MAN TANGLED UP—THIS WORLD IS NOTRUN RIGHT—UNCLE EZRA MAKES HIM TIRED.
“I hear your Uncle Ezra is here on a visit,” said the grocery man to the bad boy. “I suppose you have been having a high old time. There is nothing that does a boy more good than to have a nice visit with a good uncle, and hear him tell about old times when he and the boy's father were boys together.”
“Well, I don't know about it,” said the boy, as he took a stick of maccaroni, and began to blow paper wads through it at a wood sawyer, who was filing a saw outside the door. “When a boy who has been tough has got his pins all set to reform, I don't think it does him any good to have a real nice Uncle come to the house visiting. Anyway, that's my experience. I have backslid the worst way, and it is going to take me a month after Uncle Ezra goes away to climb up to the grace that I have fallen from. It is darn discouraging,” said the boy as he looked up to the ceiling in an innocent sort of a way, and hid the macarroni under his coat when the wood sawyer, who had been hit in the neck, dropped his saw and got up mad.
“What's the trouble? Your uncle has the reputation where he lives, of being one of the pillars of society. But you can't tell about these fellows when they get away from home. Does he drink?”
“'No, he don't drink; but as near as I can figure it, he and Pa were about the worst pills in the box, when they were young. I don't wan't you to repeat it, but when Pa and Ma were married they eloped. Yes, sir—actually ran away, and defied their parents—and they had to hide about a week, for fear Ma's father would fill Pa so full of cold lead that he would sink if he fell in the water. Pa has been kicked over the fence, and chased down alleys dozens of times by Ma's grandfather, when he was sparking Ma; and Ma was a terror too, 'cause her mother couldn't do anything with her, though she is awful precise now, and wants everybody to be too good. Why, Ma's mother used to warm her ears, and shake the daylights out of her, but it didn't do any good. She was mashed on Pa, and there was no cure for her except to have Pa prescribed for her as a husband, and they ran away. Uncle Ezra told me all about it. Ma hain't got any patience with girls now days that have minds of their own about fellows, and she thinks their parents ought to have all the say. Well, maybe she thinks she knows all about it. But when people get in love it is the same now as when Pa and Ma were trying to keep out of the reach of my grandfather's shot gun. But Pa and Uncle Ezra and Ma are good friends, and they talk over old times and have a big laugh. I guess Uncle Ezra was too much for Pa in joking when they were boys, 'cause Pa told me that all rules against joking were suspended while Uncle Ezra was here, and for me to play any thing on him I could. I told Pa I was trying to lead a different life, but he said what I wanted to do was to make Uncle Ezra think of old times, and the only way was to keep him on the ragged edge. I thought if there was anything I could do to make it pleasant for my Uncle, it was my duty to do it, so I fixed the bed slats on the spare bed so they would fall down at 2 A. M. the first night, and then I retired. At two o'clock I heard the awfulest noise in the spare room, and a howling and screaming, and I went down to meet Uncle Ezra in the hall, and he asked me what was the matter in there, and I asked him if he didn't sleep in the spare room, and he said no, that Pa and Ma was in there, and he slept in their room. Then we went in the spare room and you'd a dide to see Pa.”
Pa Was All Tied up 146
“Ma had jumped out when the slats first fell, and was putting her hair up in curl papers when we got in, but Pa was all tangled up in the springs and things. His head had gone down first, and the mattrass and quilts rolled over him, and he was almost smothered, and we had to take the bedsted down to get him out, the way you have to unharness a horse when he runs away and falls down, before you can get him up. Pa was mad, but Uncle Ezra laughed at him, and told him he was only foundered, and all he wanted was a bran mash and some horse liniment and he would come out all right. Uncle Ezra went out in to the hall to get a pail of water to throw on Pa, 'cause he said Pa was afire, when Pa asks me why in blazes I didn't fix the other bed slats, and I told him I didn't know as they were going to change beds, and then Pa said don't let it occur again. Pa lays everything to me. He is the most changeable man I ever saw. He told me to do everything Uncle Ezra wanted me to do, and then, when I helped Uncle Ezra to play a joke on Pa, he was mad. Say, I don't think this world is run right, do you? I haven't got much time to talk to you to-day, cause Uncle Ezra and me are going fishing but don't it strike you that it is queer that parents trounce boys for doing just what they did themselves. Now, I have got a friend whose father is a lawyer. That lawyer would warm his boy if he should tell a lie, or associate with anybody that was bad, and yet the lawyer will defend a man he knows is guilty of stealing, and get him clear and take the money he got from the thief, who stole it, to buy the same boy a new coat to wear to church, and he will defend a man who committed murder, and make an argument to the jury that will bring tears to their eyes, and they will clear the murderer. Queer, ain't it? And say, how is it that we send missionaries to Burmah, to convert them from heathenism, and the same vessel that takes the missionaries there carries from Boston a cargo of tin gods to sell to the heathen? Why wouldn't it be better to send the missionaries to Boston? I think the more a boy learns the more he gets mixed.” “Well, how's your theater? Have any of the great actors supported you lately?” said the grocery man, to change the subject.
“No, we are all off on vacations. Booth and Barrett, and lots of the stars, are gone to Europe, and the rest work down to less high-toned places. Some of the theater girls are waiters at summer resorts, and lots are visiting relatives on farms. I tell you, it makes a difference whether the relatives are visiting you or you are visiting them. Actors and actresses feels awfully when an old granger comes to the town where they are playing, and wants to see them. They are ashamed of his homespun clothes, and cowhide boots, and they want to meet him in an alley somewhere, or in the basement of the theater, so the other actors will not laugh at their rough relatives, but when the season is over, an actor who can remember a relative out on a farm, is tickled to death, and the granger is all right enough there, and the actor does not think of the rough, nutmeg grater hands, and the blistered nose, as long as the granger relative will put up fried pork and things, and 'support' the actor. My Uncle Ezra is pretty rough and it makes me tired sometimes when I am down town with him to have him go into a store where there are girl clerks and ask what things are for, that I know he don't want, and make the girls blush, but he is a good hearted old man, and he and me are going to make a mint of money during vacation. He lives near a summer resort hotel, and has a stream that is full of minnows, and we are going to catch minnows and sell them to the dudes for fish bait. He says some of the fools will pay ten cents apiece for minnows, so if we sell a million minnows, we make a fortune. I am coming back in September and will buy out your grocery. Say, let me have a pound of raisins, and I'll pay you when I sell my uncle's minnows.”
HE DISCUSSES THEOLOGY. MEDITATIONS ON NOAH'S ARK—THE GARDENOF EDEN—THE ANCIENT DUDE—ADAM WITH A PLUG HAT ON—“I'M ATHINKER PROM THINKERSVILLE”—THE APOSTLES IN A PATROL WAGON—ELIJAH AND ELISHA—THE PRODIGAL SON—A VEAL POT PIE FORDINNER.
“What you sitting there for half an hour for, staring at vacancy?” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he sat on a stool by the stove one of these foggy mornings, when everybody feels like quarreling, with his fingers clasped around his knee, looking as though he did not know enough to last him to bed. “What you thinking about anyway?”
“I was wondering where you would have been today if Noah had run his ark into such a fog as this, and there had been no fog-horn on Mount Ararat, and he had passed by with his excursion and not made a landing, and had floated around on the freshet until all the animals starved, and the ark had struck a snag and burst a hole in their bottom. I tell you, we can all congratulate ourselves that Noah happened to blunder on that high ground. If that ark had been lost, either by being foundered, or being blowed up by Fenians because Noah was an Englishman, it would have been cold work trying to populate this world. In that case another Adam and Eve would have to be made out of dirt and water, and they might have gone wrong again and failed to raise a family, and where would we have been? I tell you, when I think of the narrow escapes we have had, it is a wonder to me that we have got along as well as we have.”
“Well, when did you get out of the asylum?” said the grocery man, who had been standing back with his mouth open looking at the boy as though he was crazy. “What you want is to have your head soaked. You are getting so you reach out too far with that small mind of yours. In about another year you will want to run this world yourself. I don't think you are reforming very much. It is wicked for a boy your size to argue about such things. Your folks better send you to college.”
“What do I want to go to college for, and be a heartless hazer, and a poor base ball player. I can be bad enough at home. The more I read, the more I think. I don't believe I can ever be good enough to go to heaven, anyway, and I guess I will go into the newspaper business, where they don't have to be good, and where they have passes everywhere. Do you know, I think when I was built they left out a cog wheel or something in my head. I can't think like some boys. I get to thinking about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and of the Dude with the cloven hoof that flirted with Eve, and treated her and Adam to the dried apples, and I can't think of them as some boys do, with a fig leaf polonaise, and fig leaf vests. I imagine them dressed up in the latest style. I know it is wrong, but that it what a poor boy has to suffer who has an imagination, and where did I get the imagination? This confounded imagination of mine shows me Adam with a plug hat on, just like our minister wears, and a stand up collar, and tight pants, and peaked-toed shoes, and Eve is pictured to me with a crushed-angleworm colored dress, and brown striped stockings, and newspapers in her dress to make it stick out, and a hat with dandelions on, and a red parasol, and a lace handkerchief, which she puts to her lips and winks with her left eye to the masher who is standing by the corner of the house, in an attitude, while the tail with the dart on the end is wound around the rain water barrel, so Eve won't see it and get scared. Say, don't you think it is better for a boy to think of our first parents with clothes on, than to think of them almost naked, exposed to the inclemency of the weather, with nothing but fig leaves pinned on? I want to do right, as near as I can, but I had rather think of them dressed like our folks are to-day, than to think of them in a cyclone with leaves for wearing apparel. Say, it is wrong to fight, but don't you think if Adam had put on a pair of boxing gloves, when he found the devil was getting too fresh about the place, and knocked him out in a couple of rounds, and pasted him in the nose, and fired him out of the summer garden, that it would have been a big thing for this world. Now, honest?”
“Lookahere,” said the grocery man, who had been looking at the boy in dismay, “You better go right home, and let your Ma fix up some warm drink for you, and put you to bed. You are all wrong in the head, and if you are not attended to you will have brain fever. I tell you, boy, you are in danger. Come I will go home with you.”
“O, danger, nothin'. I am just telling how things look to a boy who has not got the facilities for being too good in his youth. Some boys can take things as they read them, and not think any for themselves, but I am a Thinker from Thinkerville, and my imagination plays the dickens with me. There is nothing I read about old times but what I compare it with the same line of business at the present day. Now, when I think of the fishermen of Galilee, drawing their seines, I wonder what they would have done if there had been a law against hauling seines, as there is in Wisconsin to-day, and I can see a constable with a warrant for the arrest of the Galilee fishermen, snatching the old apostles and taking them to the police station in a patrol wagon. I know it is wrong to think like that, but how can I help it? Say, suppose those fishermen had been out hauling their seines, and our minister should come along with his good clothes on, his jointed rod, his nickle-plated reel, and his silk fish line, and his patent fish hook, and put a frog on the hook and cast his line near the Galilee fish-man and go to trolling for bass? What do you suppose the lone fisherman of the Bible times would have thought about the gall of the jointed rod fisherman? Do you suppose they would have thrown stones in the water where he was trolling, or would they have told him there was good trolling around a point about half a mile up the shore, where they knew he wouldn't get a bite in a week, the way a fellow of Muskego lake lied to our minister a spell ago? I tell you, boss, it is a sad thing for a boy to have an imagination,” and the boy put his other knee in the sling made by the clenched fingers of both hands, and waited for the grocery man to argue with him.
“I wish you would go away from here. I am afraid of you,” said the grocery man. “I would give anything if you Pa or the minister would come in and have a talk with you. Your mind is wandering,” and the grocery man went to the door and looked up and down street to see if somebody wouldn't come in and watch the crazy boy, while he went to breakfast.
“O, Pa and the minister can't make a first payment on me. Pa gets mad when I ask questions, and the minister thinks I am past redemption. Pa said yesterday that baldness was caused, in every case, by men's wearing plug hats, and when I asked him where the good Elisha, (whom the boys called 'go up old bald head,' and the bears had a free lunch on them,) got his plug hat, Pa said school was dismissed and I could go. When the minister was telling me about the good Elijah going up through the clouds in a chariot of fire, and I asked the minister what he thought Elijah would have thought if he had met our Sunday school superintendent coming down through the clouds on a bicycle, he put his hand on my head and said my liver was all wrong. Now, I will leave it to you if there was anything wrong about that. Say, do you know what I think is the most beautiful thing in the Bible?”
“No I don't,” said the grocery man, “and if you wan't to tell it I will listen just five minutes, and then I am going to shut up the store and go to breakfast. You make me tired.”
“Well, I think the finest thing is that story about the prodigal son, where the boy took all the money he could scrape up and went out West to paint the towns red. He spent his money in riotous living, and saw everything that was going on, and got full of benzine, and struck all the gangs of toughs, both male and female, and his stomach went back on him, and he had malaria, and finally he got to be a cow-boy, herding hogs, and had to eat husks that the hogs didn't want, and got pretty low down. Then he thought it was a pretty good scheme to be getting around home, where they had three meals a day, and spring mattresses; and he started home, beating his way on the trains, and he didn't know whether the old man would receive him with open arms or pointed boots; but the old man came down to the depot to meet him, and right there before the passengers, and the conductor and brakemen, he wasn't ashamed of his boy, though he was ragged, and looked as though he had been on the war path; and the old man fell on his neck and wept, and took him home in a hack, and had veal pot pie for dinner. That's what I call sense. A good many men now days would have put the police on the tramp and had him ordered out of town. What, you going to close up the store? Well, I will see you later. I want to talk with you about something that is weighing on my mind,” and the boy got out just in time to save his coat tail from being caught in the door, and when the grocery man came back from breakfast he found a sign in front:—
THIS STORE IS CLOSEDTILL FURTHER NOTICE.SHERIFF.
THE DEPARTED ROOSTER—THE GROCERY MAN DISCOURSES ON DEATH—THE DEAD ROOSTER—A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH—THE TENDERNESSBETWEEN THE ROOSTER AND HIS FAITHFUL HEN—THE HEN RETIRES TOSET—THE CHICKENS!—THE PROUD ROOSTER DIES—THE FICKLE HENFLIRTING IN INDECENT HASTE.
“Why don't you take an ice pick and clean the dirt out from under your finger nails?” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the store and stroked the cat the wrong way as she lay in the sun on the counter, on a quire of manilla paper.
“Can't remove the dirt for thirty days—it is an emblem of mourning. Had a funeral at our house, yesterday;” and the boy took a pickle out of a tub and put it in the cat's mouth, and shut her teeth together on it, and then went to the show case, while the grocery man whose back had been turned during the pickle exercise, thought by the way the cat jumped into the dried apple barrel, and began to paw and scratch with all four of her feet, and yowl, that she was going to have a fit.
“I hadn't heard about it,” said the grocery man, as he took the cat by the neck and tossed her out in the back shed into an old oyster box full of sawdust, with a parting injunction that if she was going to have fits she better go out where there was plenty of fresh air. “Death is always a sad thing to contemplate. One day we are full of health, and joy, and cold victuals, and the next we are screwed down in a box, a few words are said over our remains, a few tears are shed, and there is a race to see who shall get back from the cemetery first; and though we may think we are an important factor in the world's progress, and sometimes feel as though it would be unable to put up margins and have to stop the deal, the world goes right along, and it must annoy people who die to realize that they don't count for game. The greatest man in the world is only a nine spot when he is dead, because somebody else takes the tricks the dead man ought to have taken. But, say, who is dead at your house?”
“Our rooster! Take care, don't you hit me with that canvassed ham!” said the boy as the grocery man looked mad to learn that there was nobody dead but a rooster, when he had preached such a sermon on the subject. “Yes, how soon we are forgotten when we are gone. Now, you would have thought that rooster's hen would have remained faithful to him for a week at least. I have watched them all the spring, and I never saw a more perfect picture of devotion than that between the bantam rooster and his hen. They were constantly together, and there was nothing too good for her. He would dig up angle worms and call her, and when she came up on a gallop and saw the great big worm on the ground, she would look so proud of her rooster, and he would straighten up and look as though he was saying to her, 'I'm a daisy,' and then she would look at him as if she would like to bite him, and just as she was going to pick up the worm he would snatch it and swallow it himself, and chuckle and walk around and be full of business, as though wondering why she didn't take the worm after he had dug it for her, and then the hen would look disappointed at first and then she would look resigned, as much as to say, 'Worms are too rich for my blood anyway, and the poor dear rooster needs them more than I do, because he has to do all the crowing,' and she would go off and find a grasshopper and eat it on the sly for fear he would see her and complain because she didn't divide. O, I have never seen anything that seemed to me so human as the relations between that rooster and hen. He seemed to try to do everything for her. He would make her stop cackling when she laid an egg, and he would try to cackle, and crow over it as though he had laid it, and she would get off in a corner and cluck in a modest, retiring manner, as though she wished to convey the idea to the servant girls in the kitchen that the rooster had to do all the hard work, and she was only a useless appendage, fit only for society and company for him. But I was disgusted with him when the poor hen was setting. The first week that she sat on the eggs he seemed to get along first rate, because he had a couple of flower beds to dig up, which a press of business had caused him to neglect before, and a couple of neighbors' gardens to destroy, so he seemed to be glad to have his hen retire to her boudoir and set, but after he had been shooed out of the gardens and flower beds he seemed to be nervous, and evidently wanted to be petted, and he would go near the hen and she would seem to tell him to go and take a walk around the block, because she hadn't time to leave her business, and if she didn't attend to it they would have a lot of spoiled eggs on their hand, and no family to bring up. He would scold, and seem to tell her that it was all foolishness, that for his part he didn't want to hear a lot of chickens squawking around. He would seem to argue with her that a brood of chickens would be a dead give-away on them both, and they would be at once classed as old folks, while if they were alone in the world they would be spring chickens, and could go in young society, but the hen would scold back, and tell him he ought to be ashamed of himself to talk that way, and he would go off mad, and sulk around a spell, and then go to a neighbor's hen-house and sometimes he wouldn't come back till the next day. The hen would be sorry she had spoken so cross, and would seem pained at his going away and would look anxiously for his return, and when he came back after being out in the rain all night, she would be solicitious after his health, and tell him he ought to wrap something around him, but he acted as though he didn't care for his health, and he would go out again and get chilled through. Finally the hen come off the nest with ten chickens, and the rooster seemed very proud, and when anybody came out to have a look at them he would crow, and seemed to say they were all his chickens, though the hen was a long time hatching them, and if it had been him that was setting on them he could have hatched them out in a week, or died a trying. But the exposure told on him, and he went into a decline, and one morning we found him dead. Do you know, I never see a hen that seemed to realize a calamity as she did. She looked pale, and her eyes looked red, and she seemed to be utterly crushed. If the chickens, which were so young they could not realize that they were little orphans, became noisy, and got to pulling and hauling over a worm, and conducted themselves in an unseemly manner, she would talk to them in hen language, with tears in her eyes, and it was a picture of woe. But the next day a neighboring rooster got to looking through the fence from the alley, and trying to flirt with her. At first she was indignant, and seemed to tell him he ought to go about his business, and leave her alone, but the dude kept clucking, and pretty soon the widowed hen edged up towards the fence, and asked him to come in, but the hole in the fence was too small for him, and then the chickens went out in the alley, and the hen followed them out. I shall always think she told the chickens to go out, so she would have an excuse to go after them, and flirt with the rooster, and I think it is a perfect shame. She is out in the alley half the time, and I could cuff her. It seems to me wrong to so soon forget a deceased rooster, but I suppose a hen can't be any more than human. Say, you don't want to buy a good dead rooster do you? You could pick it and sell it to somebody that owes you, for a spring chicken.”
“No, I don't want any deceased poultry, that died of grief, and you better go home and watch your hen, or you will be bereaved some more,” and the grocery man went out in the shed to see if the cat was over its fit, and when he came back the boy was gone, and after a while the grocery man saw a crowd in front of the store and he went out and found the dead rooster lying on the vegetable stand, with a paper pinned on its breast on which was a sign:—
THIS RUSTER DIDE OF COLIX.FOR SALE CHEAP TO BOARDING HOUSE ONLY.
He took the dead rooster and threw it out in the street, and looked up and down the street for the bad boy, and went in and hid a raw hide where he could reach it handy.
ONE MORE JOKE ON THE OLD MAN. UNCLE EZRA RETURNS—THE BASKETON THE STEPS—THE ANONYMOUS LETTER—“O BROTHER THAT I SHOULDLIVE TO SEE THIS DAY!”—AN UGLY DUTCH BABY—THE OLD MANWHEELS THE BABY NOW—A FROG IN THE OLD MAN'S BED.
“I see your Pa wheeling the baby around a good deal lately,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the store one evening to buy a stick of striped pepperment candy for the baby, while his Pa stopped the baby wagon out on the sidewalk and waited for the boy, with an expression of resignation on his face.
“What's got into your Pa to be nurse girl this hot weather?”
“O, we have had a circus at our house,” said the boy, as he came in after putting the candy in the baby's hand. “You see, Uncle Ezra came back from Chicago, where he had been to sell some cheese, and he stopped over a couple of days with us, and he said we must play one more joke on Pa before he went home. We played it, and it is a wonder I am alive, because I never saw Pa so mad in all my life. Now this is the last time I go into any joke on shares. If I play any more jokes I don't want any old Uncle to give me away.”
“What is it?” said the grocery man, as he took a stool and sat out by the front door beside the boy who was trying to eat a box of red raspberries on the sly.
“Well Uncle Ezra and me bribed the nurse girl to dress the baby up one evening in some old, dirty baby clothes, belonging to our wash woman's baby, and we put it in a basket and placed the basket on the front door step, and put a note in the basket and addressed it to Pa. We had the nurse girl stay out in front, by the basement stairs, so the baby couldn't get away and she rung the bell and got behind something. Ma and Pa, and Uncle Ezra and me were in the back parlor when the bell rung, and Ma told me to go to the door, and I brought in the basket, and set it down, and told Pa there was a note in it for him. Ma, she came up and looked at the note as Pa tore it open, and Uncle Ezra looked in the basket and sighed. Pa read part of the note and stopped and turned pale, and sat down then Ma read some of it, and she didn't feel very well, and she leaned against the piano and grated her teeth. The note was in a girl's hand writing, and was like this:
“Old Bald Headed Pet:—“You will have to take care of your child, because I cannot.Bring it up tenderly, and don't, for heaven's sake, send itto the Foundling Asylum. I shall go drown myself.“Your loving,“Almira.”
“What did your Ma say?” said the grocery man, becoming interested.
“O, Ma played her part well. Uncle Ezra had told her the joke, and she said 'retch,' to Pa, just as the actresses do on the stage, and put her handkerchief to her eyes. Pa said it was 'false,' and Uncle Ezra said, 'O, brother, that I should live to see this day,' and I said, as I looked in the basket, 'Pa, it looks just like you, and I'll leave it to Ma.' That was too much, and Pa got mad in a minute. He always gets mad at me. But he went up and looked in the basket, and he said it was some Dutch baby, and was evidently from the lower strata of society, and the unnatural mother wanted to get rid of it, and he said he didn't know any 'Almira' at all. When he called it a dutch baby, and called attention to its irregular features, that made Ma mad, and she took it up out of the basket and told Pa it was a perfect picture of him, and tried to put it in Pa's arms, but he wouldn't have it, and said he would call the police and have it taken to the poor house. Uncle Ezra took Pa in a corner and told him the best thing he could do would be to see 'Almira' and compromise with her, and that made Pa mad, and he was going to hit uncle Ezra with a chair. Pa was perfectly wild, and if he had a gun I guess he would have shot all of us. Ma took the baby up stairs and had the girl put it to bed, and after Pa got mad enough Uncle Ezra told him it was all a joke, and it was his own baby, that we had put in the basket, and then he was madder than ever, and he told Uncle Ezra never to darken his door again. I don't how know he made up with Ma for calling it a dutch baby from the Polack settlement, but anyway, he wheels it around every day, and Ma and Pa have got so they speak again.”
“That was a mighty mean trick, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Where do you expect to fetch up when you die?” said the grocery man.
“I told Uncle Ezra it was a mean trick,” said the boy, “but he said that wasn't a priming to some of the tricks Pa had played on him years ago. He says Pa used to play tricks on everybody. I may be mean, but I never played wicked jokes on blind people as Pa did when he was a boy. Uncle Ezra says once there was a party of four blind vocalists, all girls, gave an entertainment at the town where Pa lived, and they stayed at the hotel where Pa tended bar. Another thing I never sold rum, either, as Pa did. Well, before the blind vocalists went to bed Pa caught a lot of frogs and put them in the beds where the girls were to sleep, and when the poor blind girls got into bed the frogs hopped over them, and the way they got out was a caution. It is bad enough to have frogs hopping all over girls that can see, but for girls that are deprived of their sight, and don't know what anything is, except by the feeling of it, it looks to me like a pretty tough joke. I guess Pa is sorry now for what he did, 'cause when Uncle Ezra told the frog story, I brought home a frog and put it in Pa's bad. Pa has been afraid of paralysis for years, and when his leg, or anything gets asleep, he thinks that is the end of him. Before bedtime I turned the conversation onto paralysis, and told about a man about Pa's age having it on the West side, and Pa was nervous, and soon after he retired I guess the frog wanted to get acquainted with Pa, 'cause he yelled six kinds of murder, and we went into his room. You know how cold a frog is? Well, you'd a dide to see Pa. He laid still, and said his end had come, and Uncle Ezra asked him if it was the end with the head on, or the feet, and Pa told him paralysis had marked him for a victim, and he could feel that his left leg was becoming dead. He said he could feel the cold, clammy hand of death walking up him, and he wanted Ma to put a bottle of hot water to his feet. Ma got the bottle of hot water and put it to Pa's feet, and the cork came out and Pa said he was dead, sure enough, now, because he was hot in the extremities, and that a cold wave was going up his leg. Ma asked him where the cold wave was, and he told her, and she thought she would rub it, but she began to yell the same kind of murder Pa did, and she said a snake had gone up her sleeve. Then I thought it was time to stop the circus, and I reached up Ma's lace sleeve and caught the frog by the leg and pulled it out, and told Pa I guessed he had taken my frog to bed with him, and I showed it to him, and then he said I did it, and he would maul me so I could not get up alone, and he said that a boy that would do such a thing would go to hell as sure as preachin' and I asked him if he thought a man who put frogs in the beds with blind girls, when he was a boy, would get to heaven, and then he told me to lite out, and I lit. I guess Pa will feel better when Uncle Ezra goes away, cause he thinks Uncle Ezra talks too much about old times. Well, here comes our baby wagon, and I guess Pa has done penance long enough, and I will go and wheel the kid awhile. Say, you call Pa in, after I take the baby wagon, and tell him you don't know how he would get along without such a nice boy as me, and you can charge it in our next months' bill.”