“Say, will you do me a favor,” asked the bad boy of the grocery man, as he sat down on the soap box and put his wet boots on the stove.
“Well, y-e-s,” said the grocery man hesitatingly, with a feeling that he was liable to be sold. “If you will help me to catch the villain who hangs up those disreputable signs in front of my store, I will. What is it?”
“I want you to lick this stamp and put it on this letter. It is to my girl, and I want to fool her,” and the boy handed over the letter and stamp, and while the grocery man was licking it and putting it on, the boy filled his pockets with dried peaches out of a box.
“There, that's a small job,” said the grocery man, as he pressed the stamp on the letter with his thumb and handed it back. “But how are you going to fool her?”
“That's just business,” said the boy, as he held the letter to his nose and smelled of the stamp. “That will make her tired. You see, every time she gets a letter from me she kisses the stamp, because she thinks I licked it. When she kisses this stamp and gets the fumes of plug tobacco, and stale beer, and limburg cheese, and mouldy potatoes, it will knock her down, and then she will ask me what ailed the stamp, and I will tell her I got you to lick it, and then it will make her sick, and her parents will stop trading here. O, it will paralize her. Do you know, you smell like a glue factory. Gosh I can smell you all over the store, Don't you smell anything that smells spoiled?” The grocery man thought he did smell something that was rancid, and he looked around the stove and finally kicked the boy's boot off the stove and said, “It's your boots burning. Gracious, open the door. It smells like a hot box on a caboose. Whew! And there comes a couple of my best lady customers.” The ladies came in and held their handkerchiefs to their noses, and while they were trading the boy said, as though continuing the conversation:
“Yes, Pa says that last oleomargarine I got here is nothing but axle grease. Why don't you put your axle grease in a different kind of a package? The only way you can tell axle grease from oleomargarine is in spreading it on pancakes. Pa says axle grease will spread, but your alleged butter just rolls right up and acts like lip salve, or ointment, and is only fit to use on a sore—”
At this point the ladies went out of the store in disgust, without buying anything, and the grocery man took a dried codfish by the tail and went up to the boy and took him by the neck. “Golblast you, I have a notion to kill you. You have driven away more custom from this store than your neck is worth. Now you git,” and he struck the boy across the back with the codfish.
“That's just the way with you all,” says the boy, as he put his sleeve up to his eyes and pretended to cry, “when a fellow is up in the world, there is nothing too good for him, but when he gets down, you maul him with a codfish. Since Pa drove me out of the house, and told me to go shirk for my living, I haven't had a kind word from anybody. My chum's dog won't even follow me, and when a fellow gets so low down that a dog goes back on him there is nothing left for him to do but to loaf around a grocery, or sit on a jury, and I am too young to sit on a jury, though I know more than some of the beats that lay around the court to get on a jury. I am going to drown myself, and my death will be laid to you. They will find evidences of codfish on my clothing, and you will be arrested for driving me to a suicide's grave. Good-bye. I forgive you,” and the boy started for the door.
“Hold on here,” says the grocery man, feeling that he had been too harsh, “Come back here and have some maple sugar. What did your Pa drive you away from home for?”
“O, it was on account of St. Patrick's Day,” said the bad boy as he bit off half a pound of maple sugar, and dried his tears. “You see, Pa never sees Ma buy a new silk handkerchief, but he wants it. Tother day Ma got one of these orange-colored handkerchiefs, and Pa immediately had a sore throat and wanted to wear it, and Ma let him put it on. I thought I would break him of taking everything nice that Ma got, so when he went down town with the orange handkerchief on his neck, I told some of the St. Patrick boys in the Third ward, who had green ribbons on, that the old duffer that was putting on style was an orange-man, and he said he could whip any St. Patrick's Day man in town. The fellers laid for Pa, and when he came along one of them threw a barrel at Pa, and another pulled the yellow handkerchief off his neck, and they all yelled 'hang him,' and one grabbed a rope that was on the sidewalk where they were moving a building, and Pa got up and dusted. You'd a dide to see Pa run. He met a policeman and said more'n a hundred men had tried to murder him, and they had mauled him and stolen his yellow handkerchief. The policeman told Pa his life was not safe, and he better go home and lock himself in, and he did, and I was telling Ma about how I got the boys to scare Pa, and he heard it, and he told me that settled it. He said I had caused him to run more foot races than any champion pedestrian, and had made his life unbearable, and now I must go it alone. Now I want you to send a couple of pounds of crackers over to the house, and have your boy tell the hired girl that I have gone down to the river to drown myself, and she will tell Ma, and Ma will tell Pa, and pretty soon you will see a bald headed pussy man whooping it up towards the river with a rope. They may think at times that I am a little tough, but when it comes to parting forever, they weaken.