Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1883 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

“Hello, Hennery,” said the grocery nan to the bad boy, as he came in holdng his sides to keep them from burstng with suppressed laughter; “what has occurred to cause a pious young man to laugh in that worldly manner? You must try to cultivate a long, mournful Maintenance, and learn to sigh and look lick when yon are the happiest,” and the grocery man weighed out a couple of [xmnds of buckwneat flour for a hired ?irL “Has your pa joined the police force? I saw him driving a lot of hogs to the pound yesterday.” “That’s what I am laughing about,” said the boy, as he put an apple on the stove to bake it. “Pa has gone to tne pound after the hogs this morning. You see, I have been taking lessons in painting and drawing, and the other day I surprised pa by showing him a picture of a blue cow, with a green tail and old gold horns, and he told me he never saw anything more natural, and he advised me to turn my attention entirely to animal painting. Pa keeps four hogs in a pen in the back lot, and every day he turns them out in the alley and lets them run, and takes them up when they come home. The hogs are large white ones, regular beauties, and pa thinks about as much of them as he does of me Well, pa told me to go and turn the hogs out yesterday, and I took my paint brush along and before turning them out I painted black spots all over the hogs. You never see a lot of speckled hogs, where the spots were put on any better. The hogs looked at each other kind of astonished, and I turned them out. In the afternoon, pa went out to the pen and began to call, ‘poig, poig,’ and the pigs came running up the alley. Pa saw the strange hogs coming, and he got mad and drove them out of the alley, and then he called for his pigs again, in a muscular tone of voice, and the speckled, hogs came again, a little slower, and seeming to wonder what ailed pa. They acted as though they felt hurt at being received in such a violent manner. Pa met the speckled hogs with a broom, and he run them down the alley again, and the hogs stood off and looked at him as though they thought he had the jim-jams. You’d a dide to see pa drive his own hogs away, and talk sassy. He got a pail of swill and called the hogs again, and they came on a gallop, and then pa called a policeman and they drove the hogs to the pound. I didn’t see pa last night, but the first thing this morning I told him I had taken his advice, and turned my attention to animal painting, and that I had painted spots on our whits hogs, and made speckled hogs of them, and that speckled hogs were worth 1 cent a pound more than white hogs. Well, pa didn’t faint away, but when it all came over him, that he had drove his own hogs to the pound, he was'So cross he could have bit a nail. But he didn’t say anything to me, ’cause I s’pose he didn’t want to discourage my artistic ambitions, but he has gone down to the pound after the hogs. May be the rain has washed the spots off, and the man that keeps the pound will not let pa have ■white hogs when he left speckled ones there. However, I didn’t warrant the hogs to be fast colors, anyway. Do you think it was wrong to put spots on the hogs ?” “Wrong?” said the grocery man, as he put some white flour into the sack of buckwheat flour and mixed it up; “it was a condemned outrage and deception on your pa, and you ought to be punished. But that was not as bad as your wheeling a nigger baby behind your pa and ma, when they were coming from the museum. What did you do that for ?”

“Well, the colored baby was sawed oft onto me, and I had to wheel it,”. said the boy, as he ran his teeth into a baked apple he had taken off the stove. “You see, us boys had been sawing wood for the ladies that keep the foundling asylum, and when we got through I asked the boss woman, the one who warms the milk and puts it in the bottles for the babies, if there was anything more we could do. Well, she said it was a nice day for the babies to be outdoors, and if us boys would wheel the babies around a block, on the sidewalk, and give the poor little things a little fresh air, they would be real glad, so I told them to trot out the baby wagons, and we had a boss time wheeling those poor little infants. I guess they have about forty, and they look awful sad. Gosh, I wouldn’t like to be a foundling, with no pa nor ma, except a rubber nursing bottle, would you? If those ladies that take the foundlings and bring them up, don’t get to heaven without any questions being asked as to what church they belong to, then St. Peter is a different kind of a box-office ticket seller than I take him to be. We boys took two babies at a time, in baby wagons, until we had given ’em all a ride but one, and I tell you it did us good to see the poor little things look around at the people we passed, as though they were looking for their parents. I don’t suppose they see any parents, but I noticed a coupfe of young fellers get on the other side of the street mighty quick when they saw the procession coming. Say. some of those babies are just qs smart as anybody’s babies, and after they had been out a little while in the sunshine they would laugh and look so pleasant and happy that I had more fun and felt better than if I had been in a circus. But when the last baby came in, it was a colored- baby, and us boys looked tired. My chum he kicked *«n wheeling the colored baby, ’cause he is a Democrat, and the other boys sajd it was time for them to go home, and finally another boy and me tossed up a cent to see "which should wheel the little black fellow. It oj.me tails, and I lost, and the lady put the baby in my wagon, and I started off. The firs t thing that colored baby did was to look up at me and say ‘papa.’ Gosh, I thought I should die, and I turned round to slap. it side of the head, when the boys and the lady laughed. But when the lady said they had taught it to say ‘papa,’and I looked at it, and it was laughing and kicking and having fun, I was kind of mashed on that nigger baby, and if it ever wants a friend all it has got to do is to send a postal card to Hennery. I had more fun with that baby than you ever

I would wheel it along behind a gentleman and lady who were talking earnestly, and it would say ‘papa,’ and they would look scared, and the lady would look offended, and they would turn a corner and go off and wouldn’t speak to each other. One fellow giv? me half a dollar to take it away, and I gave the money to the lady that keeps the baby livery. Well, just before I took the colored baby back to the Home, I see pa and ma going along on the sidewalk, and pa was explaining to ma how it was that he was out till 12 o’clock the night before, at a special meeting of the lodge, and ma didn’t believe it as well as pa thought she ought to, and just then I run the baby wagon right np between them, and the colored baby said ‘papa,’ and I laughed, and ma said ‘ Hennery, where on earth did you find it,’ and pa leaned against the fence and turned pale and said, ‘lt’s a condemned lie,’ aisd the baby laughed, and then I told them I was working for the foundling asylum, wheeling babies for fresh air, and they went home, but pa walked awful tired. That’s all I did to trifle with pa’s feeling s, and I didn’t think it was very bad, do you?” “No, sir,” said the grocery man, as he took the boy by the band and pressed it heartily. “A boy who can take pleasure in doing good like that, to poor little foundlings that are despised, i< a friend oi mine, and you can paint all the speckled hogs in this ward if you want to. As Shakespere says, ‘lnasmuch as ye do unto the least of these, ye do it unto yours truly.’ ” And the grocery man drew some maple sirup out of a molasses keg for a board-ing-house keeper, and the bad boy went out to help his pa drive the speckled hogs home. — Peck's Sun.