“Well, I swan,” said the grocery man, as he put some eggs in a funnel shaped brown paper for a servant girl. “What did the minister say when he come to?”
“Say! What could he say? He just yelled 'whoa,' and kept sawing with his hands, as though he was driving. I heard that the policeman was going to pull him for fast driving, till he found it was an accident. They told me, when they carried me home in a hack, that it was a wonder everybody was not killed, and when I got home Pa was going to sass me, until the hearse driver told him it was the minister that was to blame. I want to find out if they got the minister's umbrella back. The last I see of it the umbrella was running up his trouser's leg, and the point come out by the small of his back. But I am all right, only my shoulder sprained, and my legs bruised, and my eye black. I will be all right, and shall go to work to-morrow, 'cause the livery man says I was the only one in the crowd that had any sense. I understand the minister is going to take a vacation on account of his liver and nervous prostration. I would if I was him. I never saw a man that had nervous prostration any more than he did when they fished him out of the barbed wire fence, after we struck the street car. But that settles the minister business with me. I don't drive for no more preachers. What I want is a quiet party that wants to go on a walk,” and the boy got up and hopped on one foot towards his crutcher, filling his pistol pocket with fig he hobbled along.
“Well, sir,” said the grocery man, as he took a chew of tobacco out of a pail, and offered some to the boy, knowing that was the only thing in the store the boy would not take, “Do you know I think some of these ministers have about as little sense on worldly matters, as anybody? Now, the idea of that man jerking on an old pacer. It don't make any difference if the pacer was hundred years old, he would pace if he was jerked on.”
“You bet,” said the boy, as he put his crutches under his arms, and started for the door. “A minister may be sound on the Atonement, but he don't want to saw on an old pacer. He may have the subject of infant baptism down finer than a cambric needle, but if he has ever been to college, he ought to have learned enough not to say 'ye up' to an old pacer that has been the boss of the road in his time. A minister may be endowed with sublime power to draw sinners to repentance, and make them feel like getting up and dusting for the beautiful beyond, and cause them, by his eloquence, to see angles bright and fair in their dreams, and chariots of fire flying through the pearly gates and down the golden streets of New Jerusalem, but he wants to turn out for a street car all the same, when he is driving a 2:20 pacer. The next time I drive a minister to a funeral, he will walk,” and the boy hobbled out and hung out a sign in front of the grocery:
SMOKED DOG FISH AT HALIBUT PRICES,
GOOD ENOUGH
FOR COMPANY.
CHAPTER X.
THE OLD MAN MAKES A SPEECH—THE GROCERYMAN AND THE BAD BOY
HAVE A FUSS—THE BOHEMIAN BAND—THE BAD BOY ORGANIZES A
SERENADE—“BABY MINE”—THE OLD MAN ELOQUENT—THE BOHEMIANS
CREATE A FAMINE—THE Y. M. C. A. ANNOUNCEMENT.