CHAPTER XIX.

ONE MORE JOKE ON THE OLD MAN. UNCLE EZRA RETURNS--THE BASKET ON THE STEPS--THE ANONYMOUS LETTER--"O BROTHER THAT I SHOULD LIVE TO SEE THIS DAY!"--AN UGLY DUTCH BABY--THE OLD MAN WHEELS 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 it to 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 h.e.l.l 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."

CHAPTER XX.

FOURTH OF JULY MISADVENTURES--TROUBLE IN THE PISTOL POCKET-- THE GROCERY MAN'S CAT--THE BAD BOY A MINISTERING ANGEL-- ASLEEP ON THE FOURTH OF JULY--GOES WITH HIS GIRL TO THE SOLDIER'S HOME--TERRIBLE FOURTH. OF JULY MISADVENTURES--THE GIRL WHO WENT OUT COMES BACK A BURNT OFFERING.

"Here, condemn you, you will pay for that cat," said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the store all broke up, the morning after the 4th of July.

"What cat?" said the boy as he leaned against the zinc ice box to cool his back, which had been having trouble with a bunch of fire crackers in his pistol pocket. "We haven't ordered any cat from here. Who ordered any cat sent to our house? We get our sausage at the market," and the boy rubbed some cold cream on his nose and eyebrows where the skin was off.

"Yes, that is all right enough," said the grocery man, "but somebody who knew where that cat slept, in the box of sawdust, back of the store, filled it full of firecrackers, Wednesday forenoon, when I was out to see the procession, and never notified the cat, and touched them off, and the cat went through the roof of the shed, and she hasn't got hair enough left on her to put in tea. Now, you didn't show up all the forenoon, and I went and asked your Ma where you was, and she said you had been sitting up four nights straight along with a sick boy in the Third Ward, and you was sleeping all the forenoon the 4th of July. If that is so, that lets you out on the cat, but it don't stand to reason.

Own up, now, was you asleep all the forenoon, the 4th, while other boys were celebrating, or did you scorch my cat?" and the grocery man looked at the boy as though he would believe every word he said, if he _was_ bad.

"Well, said the bad boy as he yawned as though he had been up all night, "I am innocent of sitting up with your cat, but I plead guilty to sitting up with Duffy. You see, I am bad, and it don't make any difference where I am, and Duffy thumped me once when we were playing marbles, and I said I would get even with him some time. His Ma washes for us, and when she told me that her boy was sick with fever, and had n.o.body to stay with him while she was away, I thought it would be a good way to get even with Duffy, when he was weak, and I went down there to his shanty and gave him his medicine, and read to him all day, and he cried 'cause he knew I ought to have mauled him, and that night I sat up with him while his Ma did the ironing, and Duffy was so glad that I went down every day and stayed there every night, and fired medicine down him, and let his Ma sleep, and Duffy has got mashed on me, and he says I will be an angel when I die. Last night makes five nights I have sat up with him, and he has got so he can eat beef tea and crackers. My girl went back on me 'cause she said I was sitting up with some other girl.

She said that Duffy story was too thin, but Duffy's Ma was washing at my girl's house and she proved what I said, and I was all right again.

I slept all the forenoon the 4th, and then stayed with Duffy till 4 o'clock, and got a furlough and took my girl to the Soldiers' Home. I had rather set up with Duffy, though."

"O, get out. You can't make me believe you had rather stay in a sick room and set up with a boy, than to take a girl to the 4th of July,"

said the grocery man, as he took a brush and wiped the saw dust off some bottles of peppersauce that he was taking out of a box. "You didn't have any trouble with the girl, did you?" "No,--not with her," said the boy, as he looked into the little round zinc mirror to see if his eyebrows were beginning to grow. "But her Pa is so unreasonable. I think a man ought to know better than to kick a boy right where he has had a pack of firecrackers explode in his pocket. You see, when I brought the girl back home, she was a wreck. Don't you ever take a girl to the 4th of July. Take the advice of a boy who has had experience. We hadn't more than got to the Soldier's Home grounds before some boys who were playing tag grabbed hold of my girl's crushed-strawberry polonaise and ripped it off. That made her mad, and she wanted me to take offense at it, and I tried to reason with the boys and they both jumped on me, and I see the only way to get out of it honorably, was to get out real spry, and I got out. Then we sat down under a tree, to eat lunch, and my girl swallowed a pickle the wrong way, and I pounded her on the back, the way Ma does when I choke, and she yelled, and a policeman grabbed me and shook me, and asked me what I was hurting that poor girl for, and told me if I did it again he would arrest me. Everything went wrong."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fourth of July misadventures 178]

"After dark somebody fired a Roman candle into my girl's hat, and set it on fire, and I grabbed the hat and stamped on it, and spoiled the hair her Ma bought her. By gosh, I thought her hair was curly, but when the wig was off, her hair was as straight as could be. But she was purty, all the same. We got under another tree, to get away from the smell of burned hair, and a boy set off a niger chaser, and it ran right at my girl's feet, and burned her stockings, and a woman put the fire out for her, while I looked for the boy that fired the niger chaser, but I did'nt want to find him. She was pretty near a wreck by that time, though she had all her dress left except the polonaise, and we went and sat under a tree in a quiet place, and I put my arm around her and told her never to mind the accidents, cause it would be dark when we got home, and just then a spark dropped down through the trees and fell in my pistol pocket, right next to her, where my bunch of fire crackers was, and they began to go off. Well, I never saw such a sight as she was. Her dress was one of these mosquito bar, cheese cloth dresses, and it burned just like punk. I had presence of mind enough to roll her on the gra.s.s and put out the fire, but in doing that I neglected my own conflagration, and when I got her put out, my coat tail and trousers were a total loss.

_My_, but she looked like a goose that had been picked, and I looked like a fireman that fell through a hatchway. My girl wanted to go home, and I took her home, and her pa was setting on the front steps, and he wouldn't accept her, looking that way. He said he placed in my possession a whole girl, clothed in her right mind, and I had brought back a burnt offering. He teaches in our Sunday-school, and knows how to talk pious, but his boots are offul thick. I tried to explain that I was not responsible for the fireworks, and that he could bring in a bill against the government and I showed him how I was bereaved of a coat tail and some pants, but he wouldn't reason at all, and when his foot hit me I thought it was the resurrection, sure, and when I got over the fence, and had picked myself up I never stopped till I got to Duffy's and I set up with him, cause I thought her pa was after me, and I thought he wouldn't enter a sick room and maul a watcher at the bedside of an invalid. But that settles it with me about celebrating. I don't care if we _did_ whip the British, after declaring independence, I don't want my pants burnt off. What is the declaration of independence good for to a girl who looses her polonaise, and has her hair burnt off, and a n.i.g.g.e.r chaser burning her stockings? No, sir, they may talk about the glorious 4th of July, but will it bring back that blonde wig, or re-tail my coat?

Hereafter I am a rebel, and I will go out in the woods the way Pa does, and come home with a black eye, got in a rational way.

"What, did your Pa get a black eye, too? I hadn't heard about that,"

said the grocery man, giving the boy a handful of unbaked peanuts to draw him out. "Didn't get to fighting, did he?"

"No, Pa don't fight. It is wrong, he says, to fight, unless you are sure you can whip the fellow, and Pa always gets whipped, so he quit fighting. You see, one of the deacons in our church lives out on a farm, and his folks were going away to spend the 4th, and he had to do all the ch.o.r.es, so he invited Pa and Ma to come out to the farm and have a nice quiet time, and they went. There is nothing Pa likes better than to go out on a farm, and pretend he knows everything. When the farmer got Pa and Ma out there he set them to work, and Ma sh.e.l.led peas while Pa went to dig potatoes for dinner. I think it was mean for the deacon to send Pa out in the corn field to dig potatoes, and set the dog on Pa, and tree him in an apple tree near the bee hives, and then go and visit with Ma and leave Pa in the tree with the dog barking at him. Pa said he never knew how mean a deacon could be, until he had sat on a limb of that apple tree all the afternoon. About time to do ch.o.r.es the farmer came and found Pa, and called the dog off, and Pa came down, and then the farmer played the meanest trick of all. He said city people didn't know how to milk cows, and Pa said he wished he had as many dollars as he knew how to milk cows. He said his spechulty was milking kicking cows, and the farmer gave Pa a tin pail and a milking stool and let down the bars, and pointed out to Pa 'the worst cow on the place.' Pa knew his reputation was at stake, and he went up to the cow and punched it in the flank and said, "hist, confound you." Well, the cow wasn't a histing cow, but a histing bull, and Pa knew it was a bull as quick as he see it put down its head and beller, and Pa dropped the pail and stool and started for the bars, and the bull after Pa. I don't think it was right in Ma to bet two shillings with the farmer that Pa would get to the bars before the bull did, though she won the bet. Pa said he knew it was a bull just as soon as the horns got tangled up in his coat tail, and when he struck on the other side of the bars, and his nose hit the ash barrel where they make lye for soap, Pa said he saw more fireworks than we did at the Soldier's Home, Pa wouldn't celebrate any more, and he came home, after thanking the farmer for his courtesies, but he wants me to borrow a gun and go out with him hunting. We are going to shoot a bull and a dog, and some bees, may be we will shoot the farmer, if Pa keeps on as mad as he is now. Well, we won't have another 4th of July for a year, and may be by that time my girl's polonaise and hair will grow out, and that bull may become gentle, so Pa can milk it. Ta-ta."

CHAPTER XXI.

WORKING OK SUNDAY--TURNING A GRINDSTONE IS HEALTHY--"NOT ANY GRINDSTONE FOR HENNERY!"--THIS HYPOCRISY IS PLAYED OUT-- ANOTHER JOB ON THE OLD MAN--HOW THE DAYS OF THE WEEK GOT MIXED--THE NUMEROUS FUNERALS--THE MINISTER APPEARS--THE BAD BOY GOES OVER THE BACK FENCE.

"h.e.l.lo," said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in looking sick at heart, and all broke up, "How is your muscle this morning?"

"All right enough," said the boy, with a look of inquiry, as though wondering what was coming next. "Why?"

"O, nothing, only I was going to grind the hatchet, and some knives and things, this morning, and I thought maybe you would like to go out in the shed and turn the grindstone for me, to develop your muscles.

Turning a grindstone is the healthiest thing a boy can do."

"That is all right enough," said the bad boy, as he took up a sweet cracker, "but please take a good look at me. Do I look like a grindstone boy? Do I resemble a good little boy that can't say 'no,' and goes off and turns a grindstone half a day for some old duffer, who pays him by giving him a handful of green currants, or telling him he will be a man some day, and the boy goes off one way, with a lame back, while the good man goes the other way, with a sharp scythe, and a chuckle at the softness of the boy? You are mistaken in me. I have pa.s.sed the grindstone period, and you will have to pick up another sardine who has never done circular work. Not any grindstone for Hennery, if you please."

"You are getting too smart," said the grocery man, as he charged a pound of sweet crackers to the boy's father. "You don't have to turn the grindstone if you don't want to."

"That's what I thought," says the boy as he takes a handful of blueberries. "You grindstone sharps, who are always laying for a fool boy to give taffy to, and get him to break his back, don't play it fine enough. You bear on too hard on the grindstone. I have seen the time when a man could get me to turn a grindstone for him till the cows come home, by making me believe it was fun, and by telling me he never saw a boy that seemed to throw so much soul into turning a grindstone as I did, but I have found that such men are hypocrites. They inveigle a boy into their nest, like the spider does the fly, and at first they don't bear on hard, but just let the blade of the axe or the scythe touch the grindstone, and they make a boy believe he is a bigger man than old Grant. They bet him he will get tired, and he bets that he can turn a grindstone as long as anybody, and when the boy has got his reputation at stake, then they begin to bear on hard, and the boy gets tired, but he holds out, and when the tools are ground he says he is as fresh as a daisy, when he is tired enough to die. Such men do more to teach boys the hollowness of the world, and its tricky features, than anything, and they teach boys to know who are friends and who are foes. No, sir, the best way is to hire a grown person to turn year grind one. I remember I turned a grindstone four hours for a farmer once, and when I got through he said I could go to the spring and drink all the water I wanted for nothing. He was the tightest man I ever saw. Why, tight! That man was tight enough to hold kerosene."

"That's all right. Who wanted you to turn grindstone anyway? But what is it about your Pa and Ma being turned out of church? hear that they scandalized themselves horribly last Sunday."

"Well, you see, me and my chum put up a job on Pa to make him think Sunday was only Sat.u.r.day and Ma she fell into it, and I guess we are all going to get fired from the church for working on Sunday. You see they didn't go to meetin' last Sunday because Ma's new bonnet hadn't come, and Monday and Tuesday it rained and the rest of the week was so muddy no one called, or they could not get anywhere, so Monday I slid out early and got the daily paper, and on Tuesday my chum he got the paper off the steps and put Monday's paper in its place. I watched when they were reading it, but they did not notice the date. Then Wednesday we put Tuesday's paper on the steps and Pa said it seemed more than Tuesday, but Ma she got the paper of the day before and looked at the date and said it seemed so to her but she guessed they had lost a day somehow.

Thursday we got Wednesday's paper on the steps, and Friday we rung in Thursday's paper, and Sat.u.r.day my chum he got Friday's paper on the steps, and Ma said she guessed she would wash to-morrow, and Pa said he believed he would hoe in the garden and get the weeds out so it would look better to folks when they went by Sunday to church. Well, Sunday morning came, and with it Sat.u.r.day's daily paper, and Pa barely glanced it over as he got on his overalls and went out in his shirt sleeves a hoeing in the front garden. And I and my chum helped Ma carry water to wash. She said it seemed like the longest week she ever saw, but when we brought the water, and took a plate of pickles to the hired girl that was down with the mumps, we got in the lilac bushes and waited for the curtain to rise. It wasn't long before folks began going to church and you'd a dide laughing to see them all stop in front of where Ma was washing and look at her, and then go on to where Pa was hoeing weeds and stop and look at him, and then drive on. After about a dozen teams had pa.s.sed I heard Ma ask Pa if he knew who was dead, as there must be a funeral somewhere. Pa had just hoed into a b.u.mblebee's nest and said he did not know of any that was dead, but knew some that ought to be, and Ma she did not ask any foolish questions any more. After about twenty teams had stopped, Ma she got nervous and asked Deacon Smith if he saw anything green; he said something about desecration, and drove away Deacon Brown asked Pa if he did not think he was setting, a bad example before his boy; but Pa, he said he thought it would be a good one if the boy could only be hired to do it. Finally Ma got mad and took the tub behind the house where they could not see her. About four o'clock that afternoon we saw a dozen of our congregation headed by the minister, file into our yard, and my chum and I knew it was time to fly, so we got on the back steps where we could hear. Pa met them at the door, expecting some bad news; and when they were seated, Ma she came in and remarked it was a very unhealthy year, and it stood people in hand to meet their latter end. None of them said a word until the elder put on his specs, and said it was a solemn occasion, and Ma she turned pale, and wondered who it could be, and Pa says 'don't keep us in suspense, who is dead?' and the elder said no one was dead; but they called as a duty they owed the cause to take action on them for working on Sunday.

Ma, she fainted away, and they threw a pitcher of water down her back, and Pa said he guessed they were a pack of lunatics, but they all swore it was Sunday, and they saw Ma washing and Pa out hoeing, as they went to church, and they had called to take action on them. Then there was a few minutes low conversation I could not catch, and then we heard Pa kick his chair over and say it was more tricks of that darned boy. Then we knew it was time to adjourn, and I was just getting through the back fence as Pa reached me with a barrel stave, and that's what makes me limp some!"

"That was real mean in you boys," said the grocery man. "It will be hard for your Pa and Ma to explain that matter. Just think how bad they must feel."

"O, I don't know. I remember hearing Pa and Uncle Ezra tell how they fooled their father once, and got him to go to mill with a grist, on Sunday, and Pa said he would defy anybody to fool him on the day of the week. I don't think a man ought to tempt his little boy by defying him to fool his father. Well, I'll take a gla.s.s of your fifty cent cider and go," and soon the grocery man looked out the window and found somebody had added a cypher to the 'Sweet cider, only five cents a gla.s.s,' making it an expensive drink, considering it was made of sour apples.