“Well, you know Pa is studying up on the Bible, and he is trying to get me interested, and he wants me to ask him questions, but if I ask him any questions that he can’t answer, he gets mad. When I asked him about Daniel in the den of lions, and if he didn’t think Dan was traveling with a show, and had the lions chloroformed, he said I was a scoffer, and would go to Gehenna. Now I don’t want to go to Gehenna just for wanting to get posted in the show business of old times, do you? When Pa said Dan was saved from the jaws of the lions because he prayed three times every day, and had faith, I told him that was just what the duffer that goes into the lions den in Coup’s circus did because I saw him in the dressing room, when me and my chum got in for carrying water for the elephant, and he was exhorting with a girl in tights who was going to ride two horses. Pa said I was mistaken, cause they never prayed in circus, ’cept the lemonade butchers. I guess I know when I hear a man pray. Coup’s Daniel talked just like a deacon at class meeting, and told the girl to go to the place where the minister says we will all go if we don’t do different. Pa says it is wicked to speak of Daniel in the same breath that you speak of a circus, so I am wicked I ’spose. Well, I couldn’t help it and when he wanted me to ask him questions about Elijah going up in a chariot of fire, I asked him if he believed a chariot like the ones in the circus, with eight horses, could carry a man right up to the clouds, and Pa said of course it could. Then I asked him what they did with the horses after they got up there, or if the chariot kept running back and forth like a bust to a pic-nic, and whether they had stalls for the horses and harness-makers to repair harnesses, and wagon-makers, cause a chariot is liable to run off a wheel, if it strikes a cloud in turning a corner. Pa said I made him tired. He said I had no more conception of the beauties of scripture than a mule, and then I told Pa he couldn’t expect a mule to know much unless the mule’s father had brought him up right, and where a mule’s father had been a regular old bummer till he got jim-jams, and only got religon to keep out of the inebriate asylum, that the little mule was entitled to more charity for his short comings than the mule’s Papa. That seemed to make Pa mad, and he said the scripture lesson would be continued some other time, and I might go out and play, and if I wasn’t in before nine o’clock he would come after me and warm my jacket. Well, I was out playing, and me and my chum heard of the murder in the Third Ward, and went down there to see the dead and wounded, and it was after ten o’clock, and Pa was searching for me, and I saw Pa go into an alley, in his shirt sleves and no hat on, and the police were looking for the murderer, and I told the policeman that there was a suspicious looking man in the alley, and the policeman went in there and jumped on his back, and held him down, and the patrol wagon came, and they loaded Pa in, and he gnashed his teeth, and said they would pay dearly for this, and they held his hands and told him not to talk, as he would commit himself, and they tore off his suspender buttons, and I went home and told Ma the police had pulled Pa for being in a suspicious place, and she said she had always been afraid he would come to some bad end, and we went down to the station and the police let Pa go on promise that he wouldn’t do so again, and we went home and Pa fanned the dust out of my pants. But he did it in a pious manner, and I can’t complain. He was trying to explain to Ma how it was that he was pulled, when I came away, and I guess he will make out to square himself. Say, don’t these peaches seem to have a darn queer taste. Well, good bye. I am going down to the morgue to have some fun.”
CHAPTER XIII.
HIS PA GOES TO THE EXPOSITION. THE BAD BOY ACTS AS GUIDE—
THE CIRCUS STORY—THE OLD MAN WANTS TO SIT DOWN—TRIES TO
EAT PANCAKES—DRINKS SOME MINERAL WATER—THE OLD MAN FALLS
IN LOVE WITH A WAX WOMAN—A POLICEMAN INTERFERES—THE LIGHTS
GO OUT—THE GROCERY-MAN DON’T WANT A CLERK.
“Well, everything seems to be quiet over to your house this week,” says the groceryman to the bad boy, as the youth was putting his thumb into some peaches through the mosquito netting over the baskets, to see if they were soft enough to steal, “I suppose you have let up on the old man, haven’t you?”
“O, no. We keep it right up. The minister of the church that Pa has joined says while Pa is on probation it is perfectly proper for us to do everything to try him, and make him fall from grace. The minister says if Pa comes out of his six months probation without falling by the wayside he has got the elements to make the boss christian, and Ma and me are doing all we can.”
“What was the doctor at your house for this morning?” asked the groceryman, “Is your Ma sick?”
“No, Ma is worth two in the bush. It’s Pa that ain’t well. He is having some trouble with his digestion. You see he went to the exposition with me as guide, and that is enough to ruin any man’s digestion. Pa is near-sighted, and he said he wanted me to go along and show him things. Well, I never had so much fun since Pa fell out of the boat. First we went in by the fountain, and Pa never had been in the exposition building before. Last year he was in Yourip, and he was astonished at the magnitude of everything. First I made him jump clear across the aisle there, where the stuffed tigers are, by the fur place. I told him the keeper was just coming along with some meat to feed the animals, and when they smelled the meat they just clawed things. He run against a show-case, and then wanted to go away.
“He said he traveled with a circus when he was young, and nobody knew the dangers of fooling around wild animals better than he did. He said once he fought with seven tigers and two Nubian lions for five hours, with Mabee’s old show. I asked him if that was afore he got religin, and he said never you mind. He is an old liar, even if he is converted. Ma says he never was with a circus, and she has known him ever since he wore short dresses. Wall, you would a dide to see Pa there by the furniture place, where they have got beautiful beds and chairs. There was one blue chair under a glass case, all velvet, and a sign was over it, telling people to keep their hands off. Pa asked me what the sign was, and I told him it said ladies and gentlemen are requested to sit in the chairs and try them. Pa climbed over the railing and was just going to sit down on the glass show case over the chair, when one of the walk-around fellows, with imitation police hats, took him by the collar and yanked him back over the railing, and was going to kick Pa’s pants. Pa was mad to have his coat collar pulled up over his head, and have the set of his coat spoiled, and he was going to sass the man, when I told Pa the man was a lunatic from the asylum, that was on exhibition, and Pa wanted to go away from there. He said he didn’t know what they wanted to exhibit lunatics for. We went up stairs to the pancake bazar, where they broil pancakes out of self rising flour, and put butter and sugar on them and give them away. Pa said he could eat more pancakes than any man out of jail, and wanted me to get him some. I took a couple of pancakes and tore out a piece of the lining of my coat and put it between the pancakes and handed them to Pa, with a paper around the pancakes. Pa didn’t notice the paper nor the cloth, and it would have made you laff to see him chew on them. I told him I guessed he didn’t have as good teeth as he used to, and he said never you mind the teeth, and he kept on until he swallowed the whole business, and he said he guessed he didn’t want any more. He is so sensitive about his teeth that he would eat a leather apron if anybody told him he couldn’t. When the doctor said Pa’s digestion was bad, I told him if he could let Pa swallow a seamstress or a sewing machine, to sew up the cloth, he would get well, and the Doc. says I am going to be the death of Pa some day. But I thought I should split when Pa wanted a drink of water. I asked him if he would druther have mineral water, and he said he guessed it would take the strongest kind of mineral water to wash down them pancakes, so I took him to where the fire extinguishers are, and got him to take the nozzle of the extinguisher in his mouth, and I turned the faucet. I don’t think he got more than a quart of the stuff out of the saleratus machine down him, but he rared right up and said he be condamed if believed that water was ever intended to drink, and he felt as though he should bust, and just then the man who kicks the big organ struck up and the building shook, and I guess Pa thought he had busted. The most fun was when we came along to where the wax woman is. They have got a wax woman dressed up to kill, and she looks just as natural as if she could breathe. She had a handkerchief in her hand, and as we came along I told Pa there was a lady that seemed to know him. Pa is on the mash himself, and he looked at her and smiled and said good evening, and asked me who she was.
“I told him it looked to me like the girl that sings in the choir at our church, and Pa said corse it is, and he went right in where she was and said “pretty good show, isn’t it,” and put out his hand to shake hands with her, but the woman who tends the stand came along and thought Pa was drunk and said “old gentleman I guess you had better get out of here. This is for ladies only.”