CASH PAID
FOR FAT DOGS.
CHAPTER V.
HIS PA AND DYNAMITE—THE OLD MAN SELLING SILVER STOCK—
FENIAN SCARE—“DYNAMITE” IN MILWAUKEE—THE FENIAN BOOM—
“GREAT GOD HANNER WE ARE BLOWED UP!”—HIS MA HAS LOTS OF
SAND—THE OLD MAN USELESS IN TROUBLE. THE DOG AND THE FALSE
TEETH.
“I guess your Pa's losses in the silver mine have made him crazy, haven't they?” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the store with his eye winkers singed off, and powder marks on his face, and began to play on the harmonica, as he sat down on the end of a stick of stove wood, and balanced himself.
“O, I guess not. He has hedged. He got in with a deacon of another church, and sold some of his stock to him, and Pa says if I will keep my condemn mouth shut he will unload the whole of it, if the churches hold out. He goes to a new church every night there is prayer meeting or anything, and makes Ma go with him, to give him tone; and after meeting she talks with the sisters about how to piece a silk bed quilt, while Pa gets in his work selling silver stock. I don't know but he will order some more stock from the factory, if he sells all he has got,” and the boy went on playing “There's a land that is fairer than Day.”
“But what was he skipping up street for the other night with his hat off, grabbing at his coat tails as though they were on fire? I thought I never saw a pussy man run any faster. And what was the celebration down on your street about that time? I thought the world was coming to an end,” and the grocery man kept away from the boy, for fear he would explode.
“O, that was only a Fenian scare. Nothin' serious. You see Pa is a sort of half Englishman. He claims to be an American citizen, when he wants office, but when they talk about a draft he claims to be a subject of Great Brit-tain, and he says they can't touch him. Pa is a darn smart man, and don't you forget it. There don't any of them get ahead of Pa much. Well, Pa has said a good deal about the wicked Fenians, and that they ought to be pulled, and all that, and when I read the story in the papers about the explosion in the British Parliament Pa was hot. He said the damnirish was ruining the whole world. He didn't dare say it at the table or our hired girl would have knocked him silly with a spoonful of mashed potatoes, 'cause she is a nirish girl, and she can lick any Englishman in this town. Pa said there ought to have been somebody thereto have taken that bomb up and throwed it in the sewer before it exploded. He said that if he ever should see a bomb he would grab it right up and throw it away where it wouldn't hurt anybody. Pa has me read the papers to him nights, cause his eyes have got splinters in 'em, and after I had read all there was in the paper I made up a lot more and pretended to read it, about how it was rumored that the Fenians here in Milwaukee were going to place dynamite bombs at every house where an Englishman lived, and at a given signal blow them all up. Pa looked pale around the gills, but he said he wasn't scared.
“Pa and Ma were going to call on a she deacon that night, that has lots of money in the bank, to see if she didn't want to invest in a dead sure paying silver mine, and me and my chum concluded to give them a send off. We got my big black injy rubber foot-ball, and painted 'Dinymight' in big white letters on it, and tied a piece of tarred rope to it for a fuse, and got a big fire cracker, one of those old fourth of July horse scarers, and a basket full of broken glass. We put the foot-ball in front of the step and lit the tarred rope, and got under the step with the firecrackers and basket, where they go down into the basement. Pa and Ma came out the front door, and down the steps, and Pa saw the football, and the burning fuse, and he said 'Great God, Hanner, we are blowed up!' and he started to run, and Ma she stopped to look at it. Just as Pa started to run I touched off the fire cracker, and my chum arranged it to pour out the broken glass on the brick pavement just as the fire cracker went off.”