Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 December 1883 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

•Ah, here you are at last!” said the grocery man to the bad boy. “I was afraid the change in the standard of time would mix you up so you would not come.” “Oh, you needn’t ever be afraid that I will get left,” said the bad boy, as he used the can-opener to open some peanuts. “I would have been here sooner, only pa met with a serious accident, and 1 had to go after a plumber for - him,” “Had to go after a plumber?” said the grocery man, in amazement. “Are you put of your head? Why didn’t you call a doctor? What has a plumber got to do with the practice of medicine?" “Well,! proposed to call a doctor, but pa wouldn’t have a doctor. He told me to get a plumber to the house as quick as possible. You see we have been troubled with rats at our house, and we tried poison, but they got fat on iff. We tried cats, and the rats drove the cats away. So pa went down and got some steel traps and set them around on the floor of the basement. The floor is cement and just as smooth as can be, and me and my chum go .down there and skate with our roller skates. This morning pa came down and wanted to put on my skates. I told him he couldn’t skate, and that I .should think, after his experience at the rink last winter, when he pulled a girl all to pieces, grabbing at her to keep from falling, that he would try some other amusement; but he said he knew all about it, and he didn’t want no fool boy to try to tell him anything. When a man gets old and thinks he knows it all there is no use trying to argue with him, and so I unbuckled my skates and pulled them off, and he put them on. Well, he wabbled around for a few minutes, like a feller that has been drinking gin, and held on to things till he thought he had got his bearings, when he struck out for the' back end of the basement. As he came along by the furnace one leg began to go over towards the neighbors’, and he grabbed hold of the corner of the furnace, swung around behind it, out of sight, and we heard an earthquake; and something snapped like a steeltrap, and pa yelled ‘By crimus,* and ma came down after some sassidge for breakfast, and she saw pa, and she .said ‘ Merciful goodness,’ and by that time me and my chum had got there. Well, you’d a dide to see pa. He had •come down like a ton of coal, right on that steel-trap, and it had sprung and -caught a whole mouthful of pa’s pants, and about a pound and a half or two pounds of meat, and pa was grating his teeth to try and stand it. Oh, it was the most ridiculous position I ever saw pa into, and he got mad and told me to unspring the trap. We turned him over, and me and my chum tried our best to open the trap, but it was one of these traps with a strong spring, and we .couldn’t. Pa was the only one that could spring the trap, and he couldn’t go around behind hisself to get at it, so I told him I would go after a doctor, but he said this was a case where a doctor was no good, and he wanted a plumber or a blacksmith. Pa wanted to go up in the parlor to sit on the sofa while I was gone after the plumber, But the trap was chained to the furnace and we couldn’t get it loose, so pa had to lay there on the cem»<nt floor till the plumber came. The plumber laughed at pa, and said he had done all kinds of plumbing before, but he never had a call like that. Well, he got pa out, and I don’t suppose there is a madder man in town than pa is, but there was nobody to blame but himself. Say, do you see how I can be blamed about it ?” “Naw, they can’t blame you,” said the grocery man, as he lit a clay pipe. ““But this ought to be a lesson to you that life is one continuous rat-trap, always set and baited with cheese to •catch the unwary. The business man goes about his business unconscious that the rat-trap is set where he can get into it. He extends his business, gives credit and gets credit himself, everything is booming amd he is sailing along as nice as your pa was on the roller skates, when all at once there is a slack up in business, he can’t collect what is owing to him and he has to pay what he owes, he clutches and claws at friends for help to keep him from falling, but friends have got all they can attend to to keep on their feet, and they do not reach out to kelp him, and suddenly his feet go out from under him, and be strikes something hard, and he finds that he is in life’s great rat-trap, and his creditors do not hurry to unspring the trap, and he waits for the plumber as your pa did, and thinks what a fool he has made of himself. A boy gets a situation in a store at $5 a week, and in three months he thinks he oWns the store. He is promoted and has his salary raised, •nd then he begins to dress better than the proprietor, plays billiards till the saloon closes, goes to his cheap boarding place with beer enough in him to start a new saloon, gets to buying wine and hiring livery rigs, and some day a plain-looking man calls on him and takes him up to the - police station, ■where he is told that his cash account is S6OO short, and as he hears the key -turn in the door of his cell he realizes that he has dropped square on to life’s rat-trap, which he knew was there all baited for him, but he did not have .sense enough to keep away from. Ah, boy, beware of the rat-trap. Here, take your hand out of that barrel of dried apples. How do you know but there is a trap set in there?” “That’s what I want to find out,” said the boy, as he removed his hand and looked in the barrel to see if it was really loaded for him. “Well, sir, your .-sermon on the infallibility of the rat trao, has done me good, and I only wish you could preadh it to pa. He gets into more trouble than any man I -ever saw. You heard about his coming near being lynched in the Fourth ward? It was all on account of his prowling around trying to save something. You know the alley over there where they have had so many incendiary fires ? Well, they have detectives •11 around there to try and catch the firebug. Ma sent pa over there to hire • colored woman who lives in the alley ■to do the washing, and the detectives

watched pa. When he came out of the woman’s house and was walking along towards the street he saw some shingles and shavings by the side of a new building, and' he picked np a bundle to take home for kindling. The detectives caught him, with the kindling in his arms, and they said they had got the firebug, and the people were looking for a rope for pa, when I came up and told them he was all right. My! how scared he was, but when I got him home I didn’t think it was right for him to tell ma that he cleaned out the whole police force.” “No, he ought not to have done’that. But that kindling story should be a lesson to us to avoid even the appearance of evil. In such a moment as ye think not—” “Oh, give us a rest,” said the boy, “When you talk so confounded good I always watch you, because you are either mixing cheap flour with buckwheat flour, or whittling the lead out of the weights, or charging half a pound more butter than you send to a house. I am onto you,” and the bad boy went out to help an old man carry a heavy basket home, and the grocery man charged a pound of dried apples to the boy’s father, and everybody was happy. — Peck's Sun.