Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 July 1883 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

*Why don’t yon take an ioe-pick and clean the dirt out from under your fin-ger-nails,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the store and stroked the eat the wrong way, as she lay in the sun on the counter, on a quire Of manila paper. “Can’t remove the dirt for thirty days. It is an emblem of mourning. Had a funeral at Our house yesterday,” and the boy took a pickle out Of the tub and put it into the cat’s mouth, and shut her teeth together on it, and then went to the shoW-case, while the grocery man, Whose back had befen turned during the pickle exercise, thought by the way the cat jumped into the dried apple barrel and began to paw and scratch with all four of her feet, and yowl, that she was going to have a fit. t. “I hadn’t heard about it,” said the grocery man, as he took the cat by the neck and tossed her out in the back shed into an old oyster box full of sawdust, with a parting injunction that if she was going to have fits she better go out where there was plenty of fresh air. “Death is always a SAd thing to contemplate. One day we are full of health and joy, and cold victuals, and the next we are screwed down in a box, a few words are said ovfer our remains, a few tears are shed, and there is a race to see who shall get back from the cemetery first, and though we may think we are an important factor in the world’s progress, and sometimes feel as though it would be unable to put up margins and have to stop the deal, the world goes right aMng, and it must annoy people who die "to realize tliat they don’t count for game. The greatest man in the world is only a nine spot when he is dead, because somebody else takes the tricks the dead man ought to have taken. But, say, who is dead at your house?” ■ s

“Our rooster. Take care, don’t you hit me with that canvassed ham, ” said the boy, as the grocery man looked mad to learn that there was nobody dead but a rooster, when he had preached such a sermon on the subject. “Yes, how soon we are forgotten when We are gone! Now, you would have thought that rooster’s hen would have remained faithful to him tor a week at least. I have watched them all the spring, and I never saw a more perfect picture of devotion than that between the bantam rooster and his hen. They werb constantly together and there was nothing too good for her. He would dig up angle worms and call lief, and when she came up on a gallop and saw the great big worm on the ground, she would look so proud of her rooster, and he would straighten up and look as though he was saying to her, ‘l’m a daisy,’ and then she would look at him as if she would like to bite him, and just as she was going to pick up the wermhe would snatch it and swallow it himself and chuckle and walk around and be full of business, as though wondering why she didn’t take the worm after he had dug it for her, and then the hen would look disappointed at first, and then she would look resigned* as much as to say,. ‘ Worms are too rich for my blood anyway, and the poor, dear rooster needs them more than I do, because he has to do all the crowing,’ and she would go off and find a grasshopper and eat it on the sly for fear he would see her and complain because she didn’t divide. Oh, I have never seen anything that seemed to me so human as the relations between that , rooster and hen! He seemed to try to do everything for her. He would make her stop cackling when she laid an egg, and he would try to cackle and crow over it as though he had laid it, and she would get off in a corner and cluck in a modest, retiring manner, as though she wished to convey the idea to the servant girls in the kitchen that the rooster had to do all the hard work and she was only a useless appendage, fit only for society and company for him. But I was disgusted with him when the poor hen was setting. The first week that she-sat on the eggs he seemed to get along first rate, because he had a couple of flower beds to dig up, which a press of business had caused him to neglect before; and a couple of neighbor’s gardens to destroy; so he seemed to be glad to have his hen retire to her boudoir and set, but after he had been shooed out of the gardens and flower beds he seemed to be nervous, and evidently wanted to be petted, and he would go near the hen and she would seem to him to go and take a walk around the block, because she hadn’t time to leave her business, and if she didn’t attend to it they would have a lot of spoiled eggs on their hands, and no family to bring up. He would scold, and seem to tell her that it was all foolishness, that for his part he didn’t want to hear a lot of chickens squawking around. He would seem to argtie with her that a brood of chickens would be a dead give-away on them both, and they would at once be classed as old folks, while if they were alone in the world they would be spring chickens, and could go in young society, but the hen would scold back, and tell him he ought to be ashamed of himself to talk that way, and he would go off mad, and sulk around a spell, and then go to a neighbor’s henhouse and sometimes he wouldn’t come* back till the next day. The hen would be sorry she had spoken so cross, and would seem pa ned at his going away and would look anxiously for his return, and when he came back after being out in tire rain all night, she would be solicitious after his health, and tell him he ought to wrap something around him, but he acted as though he didn’t care for big health, and he would go out again and get chilled through. Finally the hen came oft the nest with ten chickens, and the rooster seemed very proud, and when anybody came out to look at them he would crow, and seem to say they were all his chickens, though the hen was a long time hatching them, and if it had been him that was acting >e could have hatched them ou»i» a week, or died a trying, Bui the gap osure told on him, and hes«nt and one morning wi* font id Do you know, I lien that seemed to dHhmity as she did. TShe looked pale, and her eyes looked red, and she utterly crushed. If the CMWfeis, which were so young they couls realize that they were little IfecaKte; noisy, and got to puilfegfewf h£ul»g; over a worm, and conducted- themselves' in an unseemly jpwjpem she..wpnld talk to them in hen ’in ? At first she was ihdignAM*j to tell him he oughttojaPO"dbotrt his j business, and leave her alonft Ijlit the J dude kept chicking, andpriMfryjseim tlie l widowed hen edged ito iliej

and then the chickens went out m the alley, and the hen followed them out. I shall always think she told the chickens to go out, so she would have .an excuse to go after them, and flirt with the rooster, and I think it is a perfect shame. She is out in the alley half the time, and I could cuff her. It seems to me wrong to so soon forget a deceased rooster, but I suppose a hen can’t be any more than human. Say, you don’t want to buy a good dead rooster do you? You could pick it and' sell it to somebody that owes you, for a spring chicken.” >• “No, I don’t want any deceased poultry that died of grief, and you better go home and watch your hen, or you will be bereaved sotae more,” and the grocery man went out in the shed to see if the cat was over its fit, and when he came back the boy was gone, and after a while the grocery man saw a crowd in front of the store and he went out and found the. dead rooster lying on the vegetable stand, with a paper pinned on its’breast on which was a sign, “This rooster died of. colix. For sale cheep to hording house only.” He took the dead rooster and threw it out in the street, and looked up and down the street for the bad boy, and Went in and hid a raw hide where he could reach it handy*.— Peck's Sun.