Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1883 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

“Here, condemn you, you will pay for that cat,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the store all hrofee np, the morning after the Fourth •of July. “What cat?” said the boy, as he leaned against the zinc ice box to cool his back, which had been having trouble with a bunch of fire crackers in his ]pistol pocket. “We haven’t ordered any cat from here. Who ordered any <cat sent to our house? We get our •sausage at the market,” and the boy rubbed some cold cream on his nose and eyebrows, where the skin was off. “Yes, that is all right enough,” said the grocery man, “but somebody who knew where the cat slept, in the box of sawdust back of the store, filled it full of fire crackers Wednesday forenoon, when I was out to see the procession, and never notified the cat, and touched them off, and the cat went through the roof of the shed, and she hasn’t got hair enough left on her to put in the tea. Now, you didn’t show up all the forenoon, and I went and asked your ma where you was, and she said you had been setting up four nights straight along with a sick boy in the Third ward, and you was sleeping all the forenoon the Fourth of July. If that is so, that lets you out on the cat, but it don’t stand to reason. Own up, now, was you asleep all the forenoon of the Fourth, while other boys were celebrating, or did you scorch my cat ?” and the grocery man looked at the boy as though he would believe every word he said, if he was bad. “Well,” said the bad boy, as he yawned as though he had been up all night, “I am innocent of sitting up with your cat, but I plead guilty to sitting up with Duffy. You see, I am bad, and it don’t make any difference where I am, and Duffy thumped me once, when we were playing marbles, and I said I would get even with him some time. His ma washes for us, and when she told me that her boy was sick, with fever, and had nobody to stay with him while she was away, I thought it would be a good way to get even with Duffy when he was weak, and I went down there to his shanty and gave him his medicine, and read to him all day, and he cried, ’cause he knew I ought to have mauled him, and that night I sat up with him while his ma did the ironing, and Duffy was so glad that I went down every day, and stayed there every night, and fired medicine down him, and let his ma sleep, and Duffy has got mashed on me, and he says I will be an angel when I die. Last night made five nights I have sat up with him, and he has got so he can eat beef tea and crackers. My girl went back on me ’cause she said I was sitting up with some other girl. She said that Duffy story was too thin, but Duffy’s ma was washing at my girl’s house and she proved what I said, and I was all right again. I slept all the forenoon the Fourth, and then stayed with Huffy till 4 o’clock, and got a furlough and took my girl tp, the Soldier’s Home. I had rather set up with Duffy, though.” “Oh, get out. You can’t make me believe you had rather stay in a sick room and set up with a boy, than to take a girl to the Foutrh of July,” said the grocerymaq, as betook a brush and wiped the saw dust off some bottles of peppersauce that he was taking out of a box. “You didn’t have any trouble with the girl, did you?” “No; not with her,” said the boy, as he looked into the littlfe round zinc mirror to see if his eyebrows were beginning to grow. “But her pa is so unreasonable. I think a man ought to know better than to kick a boy right where he has had a pack of fire-crackers explode in his pocket. You see, when I brought the girl back home she was a wreck. Don’t you never take a girl to the Fourth of July. Take the advice of a boy who has had experience. We hadn’t more than got to the Soldier’s Home grounds before some boys who were playing tag grabbed hold of my girl’s crushed-strawberry polonaise and ripped it off. That made her mad, and she wanted me to take offense at it, and I tried to reason with the boys and they both jumped on me, and I see the only way to get out of it honorably was to get real spry, and I got out. Then we sat down under a tree tp eat lunch, and my girl swallowed a pickle the wrong way, and I pounded her on the back, the way ma does me when I choke, and she yelled, and a policeman grabbed me and shook me, and asked what I was hurting that poor girl for, and told me if I did it again he would arrest me. Everything went wrong. After dark somebody fired a Homan candle into my girl’s hat and set it on fire, and I grabbed the hat and stamped on it, and spoiled her hair that her ma had bought her. By gosh, I thought her hair was curly, but when the wig was off her own hair was as straight as could be. But she was purty, all the same. We got under another tree to get away from the smell of burned hair, and a boy set off a nig-ger-chaser, and it ran right at my girl’s feet, and burned her stockings, and a woman put the fire out for her, while I looked for the boy that fired the nigger-chaser, but I didn’t want to find him. She was pretty near a wreck by that time, though she had all her dress left except the polonaise, and we went and sat under a tree in a quiet place, and I. put my around her and told her never to mind the accidents, ’cause it would be dark when we got home, and just then a spark dropped down through the tree and fell in my pistol pocket, right next to her, where my bunch of fire-crackers was, and they began so go off. Well, I never saw such a sight as she was. Her dress was one of these mosquito-bar, cheese-cloth dresses, and it burned just like punk. I had presence of mind enough'to roll her on the grass and put out the fire, but in doing that I neglected my own conflagration, and when I got her put out, my coattail and trowsers were a total loss. My, hut she looked like a goose that has been picked, and I looked like a fiveman that has fell thipngh £ hajphway. My girl wanted to go horned ami her pa was sitting on the front steps, and he 1 wouldn’t accept her, looking that way. He said he had placed in my possession a whole girl, clothed and in her right mind, and I had brought back a burnt

offering. He teaches in our Sundayschool, and knows how to talk pious, but his boots are offul thick. I tried to explain that I was not responsible for the fire-works, and that he could bring in a bill against the Government, and I showed him how I was bereft of a coattail and some pants, but he wouldn’t reason at all, and when his foot Hit me I thought it was the resurrection, sure, and when I got over the fence,, and had picked myself up I never stopped till I got to Duffy’s and set up with him,cause I thought lieT pa was after me, and I thought he wouldn’t enter a sick-room and maul a watcher at the bedside of an invalid. But that settles it with me about celebrating. I don’t care if we did whip the British, after declaring independence, I don’t want my pants burnt off. What is the declaration of independence good for to a girl who loses her polonaise, and has her hair burned off, and a nigger-chaser burning her stockings ? No, sir, they may talk about the glorious Fourth of July, but will it bring back that blonde wig, or re-tail my coat V Hereafter I am a rebel, and I will go out in the woods the way pa does, and come home with a black eye, got in a rational way.” “What, did your pa get a black eye, too? I hadn’t heard about that,” said the grocery man, giving the boy a handful of unbaked peanuts to draw him out. “Didn’t get to fighting, did he?” “No, pa don’t fight. It is wrong, he says, to fight, unless you are sure you can whip the fellow, and pa always gets whipped, so he quit fighting. You see, one of the deacons in our church lives out on a farm, and all his folks were going away to spend the Fourth, and he had to do all the chores, so he invited pa and ma to come out to the farm and have a fine, quiet time, and they went. There is nothing pa likes better than to go out on a farm, and pretend he knows everything. When the farmer got pa and ma out there he set them-to work, and ma shelled peas while pa went to dig potatoes for dinner. I think it was mean for the deacon to sent pa out in the corn field to dig potatoes, and after he had dug up a whole row of corn without finding any potatoes, to set the dog on pa, and tree him in an apple tree near the bee-hives, and then go and visit with ma and ieaves pa in the tree with the dog barking at him. Pa said he never knew how mean a deacon could be, until he had sat on a limb of that apple tree all the afternoon. About time to do chores the farmer came and found pa, and called the dog off, and pa came down, and then the farmer played the meanest trick of all. He said city people didn’t know how to milk cows, and pa said he wished he liad as many dollars as he knew how to milk cows. He said his spechulty was milking kicking cows, and the farmer gave pa a tin pail and a milking stool, and let down the bars and pointed out t,o pa ‘the worst cow on the place.’ Pa knew his reputation was at stake, and he went up to the cow. and punched it in the flank and said, ‘hist, confound yon!’ Well, the cow wasn’t a histing cow, but a histing bull, and pa knew it was a bull as quick as he see it put down its head and heller, and pa dropped the pail and stool and started for the bars, and the bull after pa. I don’t think it was right in ma to bet 2 shillings with the farmer that pa would get to the bars before the bull did, though she won the bet. Pa said he knew it was a bull just as soon .as the horns got tangled up in his coat tail, and when he struck on the other side of the bars, and his nose hit the ash barrel where they make lye for soap, a said he saw more fireworks than we did at the Soldier’s Home. Pa wouldn’t celebrate any more, and he came home, after thanking the farmer for his courtesies, but he wants me to borrow a gun and go out with him hunting. We are going to shoot a bull and a dog, and some bees, may be we will shoot the farmer, if pa keeps on as mad as he is now. Well, we wont have another Fourth of July for a year, and may be by that time my girl’s polonaise and hair will grow out, and that bull may become gentle, so pa can milk it. Ta-ta.” — Peck’s Sun.