“He hung his hat on an evergreen, and put his overcoat on the iron fence, and I was so mortified I almost cried. My chum said if his Pa made such a circus of himself he would sand bag him. That gave me an idea, and when we got Pa most home I went and got a paper box covered with red paper, so it looked just like a brick, and a bottle of tomato ketchup, and when we got Pa up on the steps at home I hit him with the paper brick, and my chum squirted the ketchup on his head, and we demanded his money, and then he yelled murder, and we lit out, and Ma and the minister, who was making a call on her, all the afternoon; they came to the door and pulled Pa in. He said he had been attacked by a band of robbers, and they knocked his brains out, but he whipped them, and then Ma saw the ketchup brains oozing out of his head, and she screamed, and the minister said, ‘Good heavens he is murdered,’ and just then I came in the back door and they sent me after the doctor, and they put him on the lounge, and tied up his head with a towel to keep the brains in, and Pa began to snore, and when the doctor came in it took them half an hour to wake him, and then he was awful sick to his stummick, and then Ma asked the doctor if he would live, and the doc. analyzed the ketchup and smelled of it and told Ma he would be all right if he had a little Worcester sauce to put on with the ketchup, and when he said Pa would pull through, Ma looked awful sad. Then Pa opened his eyes and saw the minister and said that was one of the robbers that jumped on him, and he wanted to whip the minister, but the doc. held Pa’s arms and Ma sat on his legs, and the minister said he had got some other calls to make, and he wished Ma a happy new year in the hall, much as fifteen minutes. His happy new year to Ma is most as long as his prayers. Well, we got Pa to bed, and when we undressed him we found nine napkins in the bosom of his vest, that he had picked up at the places where he called. He is all right this morning, but he says it is the last time he will drink coffee when he makes New Year’s calls.”
“Well, then you didn’t have much fun yourself on New Years. That’s too bad,” said the grocery man, as he looked at the sad eyed youth. “But you look hard. If you were old enough I should say you had been drunk, your eyes are so red.”
“Didn’t have any fun eh? Well, I wish I had as many collars as I had fun. You see, after Pa got to sleep Ma wanted me and my chum to go to the houses that Pa had called at and return the napkins he had Kleptomaniaced, so we dressed up and went. The first house we called at the girls were sort of demoralized. I don’t know as I ever saw a girl drunk, but those girls acted queer. The callers had stopped coming, and the girls were drinking something out of shaving cups that looked like lather, and they said it was ‘aignogg.’ They laffed and kicked up their heels wuss nor a circus, and their collars got unpinned, and their faces was red, and they put their arms around me and my chum and hugged us and asked us if we didn’t want some of the custard. You’d a dide to see me and my chum drink that lather. It looked just like soap suds with nutmaig in it, but by gosh it got in its work sudden. At first I was afraid when the girls hugged me, but after I had drank a couple of shaving cups full of the ’aignogg’ I wasn’t afraid no more, and I hugged a girl so hard she catched her breath and panted and said, ‘O, don’t.’ Then I kissed her, and she is a great big girl, bigger’n me, but she didn’t care. Say, did you ever kiss a girl full of aignogg? If you did it would break up your grocery business. You would want to waller in bliss instead of selling mackerel. My chum ain’t no slouch either. He was sitting in a stuffed chair holding another New Year’s girl, and I could hear him kiss her so it sounded like a cutter scraping on bare ground. But the girl’s Pa came in and said he guessed it was time to close the place, unless they had a license for an all night house, and me and my chum went out. But wasn’t we sick when we got out doors. O, it seemed as though the pegs in my boots was the only thing that kept them down, and my chum he like to dide. He had been to dinner and supper and I had only been skating all day, so he had more to contend with than I did. O, my, but that lets me out on aignogg. I don’t know how I got home, but I got in bed with Pa, cause Ma was called away to attend a baby matinee in the night. I don’t know how it is, but there never is anybody in our part of the town that has a baby but they have it in the night, and they send for Ma. I don’t know what she has to be sent for every time for. Ma ain’t to blame for all the young ones in this town, but she has got up a reputashun, and when we hear the bell ring in the night Ma gets up and begins to put on her clothes, and the next morning she comes in the dining room with a shawl over her head, and says, ‘its a girl and weighs ten pounds,’ or a boy, if its a boy baby. Ma was out on one of her professional engagements, and I got in bed with Pa. I had heard Pa blame Ma about her cold feet, so I got a piece of ice about as big as a raisin box, just zactly like one of Ma’s feet, and I laid it right against the small of Pa’s back. I couldn’t help laffing, but pretty soon Pa began to squirm and he said, ‘Why’n ’ell don’t you warm them feet before you come to bed,’ and then he hauled back his leg and kicked me clear out in the middle of the floor, and said if he married again he would marry a woman who had lost both of her feet in a railroad accident. Then I put the ice back in the bed with Pa and went to my room, and in the morning Pa said he sweat more’n a pail full in the night. Well, you must excuse me, I have an engagement to shovel snow off the side-walk. But before I go, let me advise you not to drink aignogg, and don’t sell torn cats for rabbits,” and he got out the door just in time to miss the rutabaga that the grocery man threw at him.
CHAPTER XXX.
HIS PA DISSECTED—THE MISERIES OP THE MUMPS—NO PICKLES
THANK YOU—ONE MORE EFFORT TO REFORM THE OLD MAN—THE BAD
BOY PLAYS MEDICAL STUDENT—PROCEEDS TO DISSECT HIS PA—
“GENTLEMEN I AM NOT DEAD!”—SAVED FROM THE SCALPEL!—“NO
MORE WHISKY FOR YOU.”
“I understand your Pa has got to drinking again like a fish,” says the grocery man to the bad boy, as the youth came in the grocery and took a handful of dried apples. The boy ate a dried apple and then made up a terrible face, and the grocery man asked him what he was trying to do with his face. The boy caught his breath and then said:
“Say, don’t you know any better than to keep dried apples where a boy can get hold of them when he has got the mumps? You will kill some boy yet by such dum carelessness. I thought these were sweet dried apples, but they are sour as a boarding house keeper, and they make me tired. Didn’t you ever have the mumps? Gosh, but don’t it hurt though? You have got to be darn careful when you have the mumps, and not go out bob-sledding, or skating, or you will have your neck swell up biggern a milk pail. Pa says he had the mumps once when he was a boy and it broke him all up.