Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 November 1883 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

"Ton seem sort of broke up this morning, ” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in and stood Against the counter, under the kerosene lamp that was leaking on his hat. “And I knew you would be when I saw you going down the dark alley last night with that ragged girl that peddles Apples. Oh, you are a sly one, and I have watched you, and I am satisfied you are on the wrong road. You better let up, young man, or your people will be ashamed of you. When a boy that belongs to the better class of society goes down a dark alley with a low girl—.” “But, gol-darn itr, she lived in the Alley. If she hadn't lived in the alley I wouldn’t have gone in there,” said the boy, a little nettled at the remarks of the grocery man, and trying to explain. “Yes, that is all right,” said the •cheese fiend, winking at the carpenter, who was nailing a weather-strip on the ■door, and who looked as thongh he needed a weather-strip on the bottom of his pants, to bank up his low shoes. *Of course she lived there, and she inveigled you, a respectable boy, into her den, and you didn’t have to have your •coat-collar pulled off to get you to go. I am ashamed of you, to go off down a dark alley with a* disreputable girl —” “There, hold on, condemn you, ” said the boy, as he grated his teeth and picked up a stick of stoVe wood and •drew it on the grocery man, his face pale as a ghost, while the carpenter «topped work to look on. “You say a word against that poor girl, and down comes your grocery. She is a Christian, that girl is, though she don’t put on airs and go to church with silk dresses and rich duds. But she prays, by jingo, better than any of ’em. There aint none of these prayer sharps that get up and talk big words, that can make me cry, but that little girl made me cry last night as though I had broke a pair of skates. You see her father is a drunkard, and he takes half she makes peddling apples, to buy gin, and •her grandmother has got the consumption, and that takes the other half to support her. I knew that girl when I went to school, and yesterday she came to me crying, and said she was going to . ssk a favor of me ’cause I had a heart in me. I don’t know how she found it out, but anyway she said she had knowed it for years. It seems her drunken father had taken all her money, and had gone on an awful bum, and she didn’t haven’t any to buy some of those cough-sirup lozenges for her grandma, and the old lady was chokin up pretty rough, and she wanted me to lend her a dollar till she could realize cn the apples she was going to get trusted for. Probably you noticed I haven’t got any watch this morning’ I have got my chain, with a bunch of keys on it in my pocket, but nobpdy will know I haven’t got any watch unless they ask me what time it is, and then I will tell them it lias run down, and.l guess it has, ’cause pawnbrokers never wind up watches. Well, sir, I got $4 on my watch, and I went and bought apples for her and medicine for her grandma, and then I went down home with her. You are right about the alley being pretty rough, but when I went in the little roon, where the old lady was on a bed, and heard her let off one of those regular hark-from-the-tombs coughs, that sounded away down cellar, where it is damp and moldy, I tell you it made me feel serious. And when that ragged little girl got down on her knees and prayed, there in the dirt, and asked God to bless the friend that had risen up and lifted such a load off the sufferer, do you know, I felt as though I had swallowed a piece of turnip or something hard, and couldn’t get it up or down, and the tears come to my eyes just like when you peel onions. She didn’t use any of this highfalutin language, such as the liigh•salaried preachers use, where you want a dictionary in your pew to find what the words mean. It was no full-dress, formal prayer, like some of the ministers give us, when it seems as though they had just been given a letter of introduction to God, and wanted to show Him that He was in luck to get acquainted with so distinguished and educated a preacher. She didn’t go on and advise God how to run things, like some of the preachers I have heard, and act as though if God didn’t take their advice He would lose his situation and be mighty lucky if he got a job carrying around a collection pldte. It wasn’t that kind of a prayer. The little girl got right down on her knees, and said, 4 Oh, Father in Heaven,’ just as though God was sitting right there in front of her on a three-legged stool, and she seemed so confident that the Heavenly Father heard her that I could almost see His hand on her head, petting the poor child. She didn’t tell God anything about my pawning my watch and buying the apples, and she didn't mention my name at all, but I could imagine that even He who watches the (Sparrows fall, was onto the bunch of keys in my vest-pocket, hitched to the watch-chain, bigger than a house. Say, do you know, some of these long prayers by the dress-parade preachers, who get a salary big enough to own a yacht, make me tired, and I want to go out in the woods and hear even a flock of blackbirds sing praises, in preference to listening to a long recital of what a lot of miserable sinners all the people are who are being prayed for, but I could have listened to that dirty, ragged girl pray for an hour, she .was so natural and pitiful, and talked so God could understand it whether He had ever graduated at college or not. But sh# wasn’t talking against time for wages, and she just seemed to have a ittle conversation with the good Lord just as a child would with its father, and then she got up and fired some medicine down her grandma, and made her a qup of tea on an oil stove and toasted a piece of bread and poached an egg while I sat there thinking. Do you know she broke me all up. If it wasn’t for that old calico dress, and the shoes run over at the heel, and the moth-eaten stockings, I should have thought slid was an angel, and, by gum, I will pawn everything I have got for her to get things for her grandma, but somebody else has got to chip in to buy gin for the old man. I can’t run a hospital and a distillery both on one cheap

watch, but I am going to work for the humane society next week, and that girl can have all the money I make as long as the old lady’s cough hangs on. Say, do you think there is any bathroom in heaven where they can take such a* dirty girl as that and make an angel of her that will pass in a crowd? Take the dirt out from under her finger nails, and soak her hands in hot water, and put cold cream on them, and let her sleep a few nights with rubber gloves on, and I suppose they could make her pass as an angel. Well, I have got to go down to the Humane society office. I was in a street-car the other night and the car was full, and got off the track, and the mules couldn’t pull it. All the men sat there and wouldn’t get out. They read papers, and acted mad, while the driver pounded the mules. I was on the back step, and I yelled, ‘The members of the Humane society are requested to get out of the car and help push.’ You ought to have seen ’em. They all looked at each other, and then got out, and some of them looked ashamed, but they helped the mules. The boss of the Humane society heard of it, and he said he would give me a job watching for butchers who maul cattle. I guess I can work my way up so I will finally hold the proud position of looking after lame horses that draw swill wagons. Well, I must go and send our doctor down the alley, to sound the old lady’s cough, and have him charge it to pa.” As the boy went out the grocery man told the carpenter that boy had a heart in him as big as a barrel, but you had to watch the raisin box, all the same, when he was around.— Peck’s Sun.