“But, look-a-here,” says the grocery man, as he gave the boy a little dried up lemon, about as big as a prune, and told him he was a terror, “what is the matter of your eye winkers and your hair? They seem to be burned off.”
“O, thunder, didn’t Pa tell you about the comet exploding and burning us all? That was the worst thing since the flood, when Noar run the excursion boat from Kalamazoo to Mount Ararat. You see we had been reading about the comet, which is visible at four o’clock in the morning, and I heard Pa tell the hired girl to wake him and Ma up when she got up to set the pancakes and go to early mass so they could, see the comet. The hired girl is a Cathlick, and she don’t make no fuss about it, but she has got more good, square relidgin than a dozen like Pa. It makes a good deal of difference how relidgin affects different people, don’t it. Now Pa’s relidgin makes him wild, and he wants to kick my pants, and pull my hair, but the hired girl’s relidgin makes her want to hug me, if I am abused, and she puts anarchy on my bruises, and gives me pie. Pa wouldn’t get up at four o’clock in the morning to go to early mass, unless he could take a fish pole along and some angel worms. The hired girl prays when no one sees her but God, but Pa wants to get a church full of sisterin’, and pray loud, as though he was an auctioneer selling tin razors. Say, it beats all what a difference liver medicine has on two people, too. Now that hickory nut day, when me and my chum got full of Pa’s liver medicine, I felt so good natured I gave my hickory nuts away to the children, and wanted to give my coat and pants to a poor tramp, but my chum, who ain’t no bigger’n me, got on his ear and wanted to kick the socks off a little girl who was going home from school. It’s queer, ain’t it. Well, about the cornet. When I heard Pa tell the hired girl to wake him and Ma up, I told her to’ wake me up about half an hour before she waked Pa up, and then I got my chum to stay with me, and we made a comet to play on Pa, you see my room is right over Pa’s room, and I got two lengths of stove pipe and covered them all over with phosphorus, so they looked just as bright at as a comet. Then we got two Roman candles and a big sky rocket, and we were going to touch off the Roman candles and the sky rocket just as Pa and Ma got to looking at the comet. I didn’t know that a sky rocket would kick back, did you? Well, you’d a dide to see that comet. We tied a piece of white rubber garden hose to the stove pipe for a tail and went to bed, and when the girl woke us up we laid for Pa and Ma. Pretty soon we heard Pa’s window open, and I looked out, and Pa and Ma had their heads and half their bodies out of the window. They had their night shirts on and looked just like the pictures of Millerites waiting for the world to come to an end. Pa looked up and seed the stove pipe and he said:
“Hanner, for God’s sake, look up there. That is the damest comet I ever see. It is as bright as day. See the tail of it. Now that is worth getting up to see.”
“Just then my chum lit the two Roman candles and I touched off the rocket, and that’s where my eye winkers went. The rocket busted the joints of the stove pipe, and they fell down on Pa, but Ma got her head inside before the comet struck, and wasn’t hurt, but one length of stove pipe struck Pa endways on the neck and almost cut a biscuit out of him, and the fire and sparks just poured down in his hair, and burned his night shirt. Pa was scart. He thought the world was coming to an end, and the window came down on his back, and he began to sing, “Earth’s but a desert drear, Heaven is my home.” I see he was caught in the window, and I went down stairs to put out the fire on his night shirt, and put up the window to let him in, and he said, “My boy, your Ma and I are going to Heaven, but I fear you will go to the bad place,” and I told him I would take my chances, and he better put on his pants if he was going anywhere that there would be liable to be ladies present, and when he got his head in Ma told him the world was not coming to an end, but somebody had been setting off fireworks, and she said she guessed it was their dear little boy, and when I saw Pa feeling under the bed for a bed slat I got up stairs pretty previous now, and don’t you forget it, and Ma put cold cream on where the sparks burnt Pa’s shirt, and Pa said another day wouldn’t pass over his head before he had me in the Reform School. Well, if I go to the Reform School, somebody’s got to pay attention, you can bet your liver. A boy can’t have any fun these days without everybody thinks he is a heathen. What hurt did it do to play comet? It’s a mean father that wont stand a little scorchin’ in the interests of science.”
The boy went out, scratching the place where his eye winkers were, and then the grocery man knew what it was that caused the fire engines to be out around at four o’clock in the morning, looking for a fire.
CHAPTER XVIII.
HIS PA GOES HUNTING. MUTILATED JAW—THE OLD MAN HAS TAKEN TO
SWEARING AGAIN—OUT WEST DUCK SHOOTING—HIS COAT-TAIL SHOT
OFF—SHOOTS AT A WILD GOOSE—THE GUN KICKS!—THROWS A CHAIR
AT HIS SON—THE ASTONISHED SHE DEACON.
“What has your Pa got his jaw tied up for, and what makes his right eye so black and blue,” asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as the boy came to bring some butter back that was strong enough to work on the street. “You haven’t hurt your poor old Pa, have you?”
“O, his jaw is all right now. You ought to have seen him when the gun was engaged in kicking him,” says the boy as he set the butter plate on the cheese box.