The Bad Boy Relates the Automobile Ride He and Dad Had—They Sneak Out of Town.
“Give me a package of your strongest breakfast food, and a big onion,” said the Bad Boy, as he came into the grocery, looking as weak as a fever convalescent, “and I want to eat the onion right now.”
“Well, that is a combination, sure enough,” said the old groceryman, as he wrapped a package of breakfast food in a paper and watched the boy rub half an onion on a salt bag, and eat it greedily. “What is the matter with you to look so sick, and eat raw onion before breakfast?”
“Oh, it is this new-fashioned way of living that is killing little Hennery. When I lived at home before we used to have sassidge and pancakes for breakfast, roast meat for dinner and cold meat for supper, and dad was healthy as a tramp, ma could dance a highland fling, I could play all kinds of games and jump over a high board fence when anybody was chasing me. Now we have some kind of breakfast food three times a day because ma reads the advertisements, and dad is so weak he has to be helped to dress, ma goes moping around like a fashionable invalid, I am so tired I can't hit a window with a snowball, and the dog that used to fight cats now wants to lay in front of the grate and wish he was dead. Gosh, but there ought to be a law that any man that invents a new breakfast food should be compelled to eat it. Gee, but that onion gives a man strength.”
{Illustration: “Jerusalem, but You Are a Sight,” Said the old Grocery man.}
“I should think so,” said the old groceryman, as he took a rag and set it on fire and let the smoke purify the room. “But I suppose your folks are like a great many others who have quit eating meat on account of the meat trust, and are going to die in their tracks on health food. Is your dad going out today to get the fresh air and brace up for his next trip?”
“No, dad is going to stay in the house. He wants ma to get him a female trained nurse, but ma kicks. They had a trained nurse for a week, once, but ma had one of those little electric flash-lights that you touch a button and it lights up the room like a burglar was in the house, and she used to get up in the night and flash the light into dad's room. Dad always had nervous prostration after ma flashed the light, and the nurse fainted dead away, so ma and I are going to do the nursing until dad is strong enough to travel again, and then he and I skip.”
“Where are you going first?” asked the old groceryman, as he opened the door to let the odor of onion, and burned rag out of the room. “What kind of treatment do the doctors advise to bring the old man around so he will be himself again?”