Then what do you suppose they set me to work at? Skinning bull heads and taking out the insides. It seems the boys catch bull heads in a pond, and the bull heads are used for human food, and the freshest boys were to dress them. Well, I wasn’t going to kick on anything they gave me for a stunt, so I put on an apron, and for four hours I skinned and cut open bull heads in a crude sort of way, until I was so sick I couldn’t protect myself from the assaults of the live bull heads, and the cook said I done the job so well that she would ask to have me skin all the bull heads after that. I said I would rather milk cows so the pirate gave me a milk pail and told me to go and milk the freckled cow, and I went up to the cow as I had seen farmers do, and sat down on a wooden camp stool and put the pail under the cow, and began to squeeze the Summer Sausages she wore under her stomach, four of ’em, and the more I squeezed the more there didn’t any milk come, and the cow looked around at me in a pitying sort of way, but the milk did not arrive on schedule time, and then I thought of a farmer I once saw kick a cow in the slats, and I thought maybe that was the best way to cause the milk to hurry and flow, so I got up off the stool and hauled off my hind leg and gave that cow a swift kick that sent her toes clear in to her liver and lights and sausage covers.
Well I thought it was a car of dynamite running into an elevator and exploding, but the boys that picked me up and poured milk on my face to bring me to, said it was not an explosion, but that the cow had reared up in front and kicked up behind, and struck me with all four feet, and had hooked me with her horns, and switched me with her tail, and pawed me with her forward feet, and licked my hair with her tongue, and laid down and rolled on me. Well, I certainly looked it. Gee, but I don’t want any more farmer’s life in mine.
I certainly thought that was the way to cause a cow to give milk. Maybe I ought to have sworn at her the way the farmer did. I remember now, that he used language not fit to print, but I have not taken the swearing degree yet.
Well, they got me braced up so I could go to dinner, and it was surely a sumptuous repast, fried bull heads and bread. I have eaten fish at home and at hotels, where you had ketchup, and celery, and vegetables, and gravy, and pie, and good things, but to sit down with fifty boys and eat just bull heads, and stale bread, and try to look pleasant like you were at a banquet, was one on your little Hennery that made him feel that the pleasures of being an orphan had been over drawn.
Gosh, but the boys tell me we have bull heads here six times a week, because they don’t cost anything, and that the bones stick through your skin so they hold your clothes on.
I am organizing a union among the boys and we are going to call a strike, and if the pirate with one eye does not grant all we ask, we are going to walk out in a body, and jump a freight train, and go out in the wide world to make our fortunes. I shall go look for pa. There can’t no man give me such a dirty shake. I feel like I had been left on a door step, with a note on the basket asking the finder to take good care of me “’cause I was raised a pet.”
CHAPTER II.
No Encouragement for Inventive Genius in Orphan Home—The Boy Uses His New Invention, a Patent Clothes Wringer, in Milking.
There is no encouragement for inventive genius in this orphans’ home that I am honoring with my patronage.