Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1883 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

“I am thy father’s ghost,” said a sheeted form in the door-way of the grocery, one evening, and the grocery man got behind the cheese box, -while the ghost continued in a sepulchral voice, “doomed for a certain time to walk the night/’ and, vyrving a chair round, the ghost strode up to the grocery man, and with the other ghostly hand reached into a box of figs. “No you ain’t no ghost,” said the grocery man, recognizing the bad boy. “Ghosts do not go prowling around groceries stealing wormy figs. What do'you mean by this sinful masquerade business? My father never had no ghost.” “Oh, we have struck it now,” said the bad boy as he pulled off his mask and rolled up the sheet he had worn around him. We are going to have amateur theatricals to raise money }to have' the church carpeted, and I am going to boss the job.” “You don’t say,” answered the grocery man, as he thought how much he could sell to the church people for a strawberry and ice-cream festival, and how little he could sell for amateur theatricals. “Who is going into it, and what you going to play?" “Pa and ma, and me, and the minister, and three choir sin gens, and my chum, and the minister’s wife, and two deacons, and an old maid are rehearsing, but we have not decided what to play yet. They all want to play a different play, and I am fixing it so they can all be satisfied. The minister ■wants to play Hamlet, pa wants to play Rip Van* ma wants to play Mary Anderson, the old maid wants to play a boarding-school play, and the -choir singers wnt an opera, and the mteieter's mfd .wants Mfclfcth, thy Chum., and me Wit jhad -jk JehegraMlast night, and I ala (the only cM abfc |o-3b;. YoTf^efe 1 thoy hM'-O pVrptotfkig different plays, afidlJ We lly|he minMtdteSail SfcwJMelrof hfc a, maftUe ’ftadi < f |a linen buggy lap blanket, <Sd he w©i a ia knife suqlt aw'Mhet 0 ffejlowsjsffijtj bonnets’i.'aiyl' WJuii 0 tteathewwear WEen they get an iAptijtion an you never Saw Hamlet murdered the way he did it. His interpretation qf the character was thaw A dud.* that tallied through his nose, and whHa be Ws , inflating suit dj,«as Rfar Wtmt tyle^^p^ s he r up -till- rnnadvMMtcliEflfe eajne in, in the sleep-wajking ■'scene. She couHn’i hud a so Tteok a slide of watermelon andsharpened it for hey, |and she ma(MjLmiatake inthe, one slje was going to stab. and she stabbefl ■Hamlet inithe heck a slice of watermelon, and the core qj the melon •fell on pa’s face, as he lap asleep as jßip, and when Lady Macbeth said, 'Out, damned spot,’ pa woke up and felt the gob of watermelon on his face and he thoiight he had been murdered, and ma came in on a hop, skip and jump, as ‘Parthenia,’ and threw her arms around a deacon who was going to play the grave digger, and began to call him pet names, and pa was mad, and the choir singers they began to sing, Tn the North Sea Lived a Whale,’ and then they quit acting. You’d a dide to see Hamlet. The piece of watermelon went down his neck, and Lady Macbeth went off and left it in the wound under his collar, and ma had to pull it out, and Hamlet said the seeds and the juice was running down inside his shirt, and he said he wouldn’t play if he was going to be stabbed with a slice of melon, so while his wife was getting the melon seeds out of his neck, and drying the juice on his shirt, I sharpened a cucumber for Lady Macbeth to use for a dagger, but Hamlet kicked on cucumbers, too, and I had more trouble than any stage manager over had. Then pa wanted to rehearse the drunken scene in ‘Rip Van Winkle,’ where he hugs Grechten and drinks out of a flask behind her back, and he got one of the choir singers to act as Grechten, and I guess he would have been hugging her till this time, and have swallowed the flask if ma had not took him by the ear, and said a little of that would go a good ways in an entertainment for the church. Pa said he •didn’t know as it was any worse than her prancing up to a grave-digger and hugging him till the filling came out of his teeth, and then the minister decided that we wouldn’t have any hugging at all in the play, and the choir girls said they wouldn’t play, and the old maid’s struck, and the play came to a standstill.” “Well, that beats anything I ever heard teU off. It’s a shame for people outside, the profession to do play-acting, and I won’t go to the entertainment unless I get a pass,” said the grocery man. “Did you rehearse anv more?” “Yes, ghost soene,” said “and he' Wanted me to be the ghost. Well,' they have two Markses and two Topsies in ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ and I thought two ghosts in ‘Hamlet’ would about fill the bill for amateurs, so .1 got my chum to act as one ghost. Wb broke them all up. I wanted to have 'something new in ghosts, so my chum and me got two pair of ma’s long stockings, one pair red and one pair blue, and I put on a red one and a blue one, and my chum did the same. Then we got some ruffled clothes belonging to ma, with flounces and things on, and put them on so they came most down to our knees, and we put sheets over us that came clear to our feet, and when Hamlet got to yearning for his father's ghost, I came in out of the bath-room with the sheet over me and said I was the huckleberry he was looking for, and my chum followed me out, and said he was a twin ghost, also, and then Hamlet got on his ear and said he wouldn’t play with two ghosts, and he went off pouting, and then my chum and me pulled off the sheets and danoed a clog-dance. Well, when the rest of the troupe saw our make-up it nearly killed them. Most of them had seen ballet-dancers, but they never saw them with different colored socks. The minister said this benefit was rapidly

becoming *• farce,’ and before we had danced half a minute ma she recognized her socks, and she came for me with a hot box, and made me take them off, and pa was mad and said the dancing was the only thing that was worth the price of admission, and he scolded ma, and the choir girls sided with pa, and just then my chum caught his toe in the carpet and fell down, and that loosened the plaster overhead and about a bushel fell on the crowd. Pa thought lightning had struck the house, the minister thought it was a judgment on them all for play-acting, and he began to shed his hamlet costume with one hand and pick the plaster out.of his hair with the other. The women screamed and tried to get the plaster out of their necks, and while pa was brushing off the choir singers ma said the rehearsal was adjourned, and they all went home, but we are going to rehearse again on Friday night. The play cannot be considered a success, but we will bring it out all right by the time the entertainment is to come off.” “By gum,” said the grocery man, “I would like to have seen that minister as Hamlet. Didn’t he look funny ?” “Funny! Well, I should remark. He seemed to predominate. That is, he was too fresh, too numerous, as itwere. But at the next rehearsal I am goingdo work in an act from ‘Richard the Third,’ and my chum is going to play the Chinaman of the ‘Danites,’ and I guess we will take the cake. Say, I want to work in an idiot somewhere. How would you like to play the part ? You wouldn’t have to rehearse the part or anything—” At this point the bad boy was seen to go out of the grocery real spry, followed by a box of wooden clothes-pins that the grocery man had thrown after him, —Pec k’s Sun. Fortunes in Stock. But few persons, says the lowa State Register, estimate the rapid increase of a herd of . cattle, and consequently are at ft loss to know why suehfine fortunes are madp-ou the farm or ranch- by cattle breeding or feeding. A man starts out with 100 good cows, with ample range for''them, Let us see what he'may reasonably expect in return for his capital and care in ten years. The cows, say, cost SSO a head, or s£,‘ooo. If the cows and their female are kept for breeding, it is reasonable to estimate 40 per cent, increase in female calves ■yearly, as well as the same Indreksb in male calves. The increase in the female line will be aS follows: > Helfers. 100 cows in first year drop .... 40 100 cows in second year drop 40 140 cows in third year drop 56 180 cows i 1 fourth year drop;." 72 236 caws in fifth year drop. .. 1»i . ■ 94 308 cows in sixth year droo 123 402 cows In seventh year dr0p............... 161 526 cows in- eighth year drop. 210 686 cows in ninth year drop 274 896 cowg in tenth year drop , j....... 358 Total, ten years. .<1,428 There will be an equal' number of male calves, which will come into market at 3 years of age, as follows: Fat steers at’end of third year 40 Fat steers at end of fourth year 40 Fat steers at end of fifth year 56 Fat steers at end of sixth year 72 Fat steers at end of seventh year 94 Fat steers at end of eighth year..' 123 Fat steers at end of ninth year 161 Fat steers at end of tenth year 210 Total for seven years 796 These at S6O per head will amount to $47,760, which had been received during the last seven years of the ten to refund capital and pay expenses. At the end of ten years there will be on hand 1,428 cows and heifers, and 274 2-year-old steers, and 358 Iryear-old. It will be observed in all these calculations of either heifers or steers we have allowed for 20 per cent, per year for failure of calves and for deaths and accidents afterward. The steers which have been marketed pay the first investment of $5,000, and leave $4,200 per year for expenses. The stock on hand at the end of ten years is worth SBO,OOO. This is how money is made on large stock- farms or on ranches on the plains. How Some People Look Upon Smuggling. Many people have a notion that there is no moral wrong in smuggling. A few years ago a dealer in laces in Leonard street, New York, was found to have been extensively engaged in smuggling. He had made himself liable to pay a penalty of SIO,OOO. I took him to the District Attorney’s office, where he expressed his willingness to pay the cash. He said: “I suppose you think I have committed some moral wrong. I do not think so. I have merely violated a legal restriction of the United States, but committed no moral offense. Your Government levies a duty of 60 per cent, to-day and tomorrow takes it off. Morality is not made and unmade in that way.” He paid the SIO,OOO and that ended, it. He represents a large class of people claiming to be honest who do not hesitate to defraud the Custom House. Very respectable people have been caught smuggling clothing, and I found one jjftercjiant who regularly bought hits clothes from a London tailor without Staying , duty.— Customs Officer, in New York Sun.