“Hornets! Well, I’ll be cussed,” remarked the grocery man, as he put up the butter tryer, and handed the boy a slice of rotten muskmelon. “How in the world did he get into a nest of hornets? I hope you did not have anything to do with it.”
The boy buried his face in the melon, until he looked as though a yellow gash had been cut from his mouth to his ears, and after swallowing the melon, he said: “Well, Pa says I was responsible, and he says that settles it, and I can go my way and he will go his. He said he was willing to overlook everything I had done to make his life unbearable, but steering him onto a nest of hornets, and then getting drunk, was too much, and I can go.”
“What, you haven’t been drunk,” says the grocery man, “Great heavens, that will kill your poor old father.”
“O, I guess it won’t kill him very much. He has been getting drunk for twenty years, and he says he is healthier to-day than he ever was, since his liver has got to working again. You see, Monday was a regular Indian summer day, and Pa said he would take me and my chum out in the woods to gather hickory nuts, if we would be good. I said I would, and my chum said he would, and we got a couple of bags and went away out to Wauwatosa, in the woods. We clubbed the trees and got more nuts than anybody, and had a lunch, and Pa was just enjoying his relidgin first rate. While Pa was taking a nap under a tree, my chum and me looked around and found a hornets’ nest on the lower limb of the tree we were sitting under, and my chum said it would be a good joke to get a pole and run it into the hornet’s nest, and then run. Honest, I didn’t think about Pa being under the tree, and I went into a field and got a hop pole, and put the small end up into the nest, and gouged the nest a couple of times, and when the boss hornet came out of the hole and looked sassy, and then looked back in the hole and whistled to the other hornets to come out and have a circus, and they began to come out, my chum and me run and climbed over a fence, and got behind a pile of hop poles that was stacked up.”
“I guess the hornets saw my Pa just as quick as they got out of the nest, cause pretty soon we heard Pa call to ‘Helen Damnation,’ or some woman we didn’t know, and then he took his coat, that he had been using for a pillow, and whipped around, and he slapped hisself on the shoulders, and then took the lunch basket and pounded around like he was crazy, and bime-by he started on a run towards town, holding his pants up, cause his suspenders was hanging down on his hips, and I never see a fat man run so, and fan himself with a basket. We could hear him yell, ‘come on, boys. Hell is out for noon,’ and he went over a hill, and we didn’t see him any more. We waited till near dark because we was afraid to go after the bags of nuts till the hornets had gone to bed, and then we came home. The bags were awful heavy, and I think it was real mean in Pa to go off and leave us, and not help carry the bags.”
“I swan,” says the grocery man, “You are too mean to live. But what about your getting drunk?”
“O, I was going to tell you. Pa had a bottle of liver medicine in his coat pocket, and when he was whipping his hornets the bottle dropped out, and I picked it up to carry it home to him. My chum wanted to smell of the liver medicine, so he took out the cork and it smelled just like in front of a liquor store on East Water street, and my chum said his liver was bad, too, and he took a swaller, and he said he should think it was enough to cut a feller’s liver up in slices, but it was good, and then I had a peculiar feeling in my liver, and my chum said his liver felt better after he took a swaller, and and so I took a swaller, and it was the offulest liver remedy I ever tasted. It scorched my throat just like the diptheria, but it beats diptheria, or sore throat, all to pieces, and my chum and me laffed, we was so tickled. Did you ever take liver medicine? You know how it makes you feel as if your liver had got on top of your lights, and like you wanted to jump and holler. Well, sir, honest that liver medicine made me dance a jig on the viaduct bridge, and an old soldier from the soldiers’ home came along and asked us what was the matter, and we told him about our livers, and the liver medicine, and showed him the bottle, and he said he sposed he had the worst liver in the world, and said the doctors at the home, couldn’t cure him. It’s a mean boy that won’t help a nold vetran cure his liver, so I told him to try Pa’s liver remedy, and he took a regular cow swaller, and said, ‘here’s to your livers, boys.’ He must have a liver bigger nor a cow’s, and I guess it is better now.
“Then my liver begun to feel curus again, and my chum said his liver was getting torpid some more, and we both took another dose, and started home and we got generous, and give our nuts all away to some boys. Say, does liver medicine make a feller give away all he has got? We kept taking medicine every five blocks, and we locked arms and went down a back street and sung ‘O it is a glorious thing to be a pirut king,’ and when we got home my heart felt bigger nor a washtub and I thought p’raps my liver had gone to my head, and Pa came to the door with his face tied up in towels, and some yellow stuff on the towels that smelted like anarchy, and I slapped him on the shoulder and shouted, ’Hello, Gov., how’s your liver,’ and gave him the bottle, and it was empty, and he asked me if we had been drinking that medicine and he said he was ruined, and I told him he could get some more down to the saloon, and he took hold of my collar and I lammed him in the ear, and he bounced me up stairs, and then I turned pale, and had cramps, and I didn’t remember any more till I woke up and the doctor was over me, and Pa and Ma looked scared, and the Doc. had a tin thing like you draw water out of a country cistern, only smaller, and Ma said if it hadn’t been for the stomach pump she wouldn’t have had any little boy, and I looked at the knobs on Pa’s face and I laffed and asked Pa if he got into the hornets, too. Then the Doc. laffed, and Ma cried, and Pa swore, and I groaned, and got sick again, and then they let me go to sleep again, and this morning I had the offulest headache, and Pa’s face looks like he had fell on a picket fence. When I got out I went to my chum’s house to see if they had got him pumped out, and his Ma drove me out with a broom, and she says I will ruin every boy in the neighborhood. Pa says I was drunk and kicked him in the groin when he fired me up stairs, and I asked him how I could be drunk just taking medicine for my liver, and he said go to the devil, and I came over here. Say, give me a lemon to settle my stomach.”