Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 February 1884 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

“Come in the back room, Hennery, I | want to talk with you,” said the grocery ! man to the bad boy, as he came in laughing and slapping his hands on his legs. “I have heard something to-day j that has hurt me as much as though you* was mv own boy,” and the grocery man looked as though it wouldn’t take many good-sized onions to make the tears come. “Great jewhillikens,what is it ?” asked the bad boy, as his face sobered down at the look of pain on the face of his mercantile friend. “What is the matter? Won’t your creditors accept 10 cents on the dollar ?” and the boy looked like a lawyer, ready to help a client out, and reached into a cinnamon bag and took out a handful of cinnamon. “No, nothing of that kind,” said the grocery man. “I have concluded not to fail. But I am told on good authority that you have become bad again, and that you have been playing the meanest trick on your pa that you have ever played. The minister told me he was coming in from a country funeral the other day, and he overtook your pa on the road with a gun, and asked him to get in and ride, and your pa’s pants were all torn, his boots and gun full of snow, and he was so scared that he kept

looking around all the way to town, expecting to be shot in the back. Now, what kind of a way is that to treat the author of your being ? Say, you will have a through ticket to the bad place, and your train will leave on schedule time, and arrive at tke Grand Central depot in hades, just as the tire is kindled. You bad, bad boy. I have been proud of you, and thought you would come out all right, but now I know you are a hypocrite.” “There, there, don’t put ou any extra sadness, ” said the boy, as he quartered an orange. “Pa is all right. He wanted us to stir him up. You see, since I have been good, pa has been neglected, and he has become sour, and his clothes don’t fit. He told ma that what he wanted was excitement, and he had got to have it. He said when the boys were playing things on him, and making him scratch gravel, and he felt as though a house was going to fall on him every minute, he enjoyed himself, had a good appetite, and felt equal to any emergency, but since the boys had become good, and let him alone, his life was a burden, he had failed in business, and everything went wrong, and unless there was a change soon, he would lose his mind. He said he sighed for the old times, when he didn’t know whether he was afoot or a horseback, and when something was liable to happen every, minute. He said he was brought up to be surprised, and fall through holes, and to have everything stop, and to lead a quiet life, add just, eat, drink, and sleep, with no cyclones, no happy laughter of children raising the deuce, was more than he could bear. Ma told me about it, and the state of mind pa was in, and I felt sorry for pa. Ma told me to try and think up something that would sort of wake up pa, or he would relapse into a state of melancholic, and have to hire a doctor. I told my chum about pa’s case, and he said it was too bad to see a man suffer that way, and we must do something to save his life. So we agreed to take pa out rabbit hunting. I asked pa if he didn’t want to go with us, and he jumped right up and yelled, and said it would tickle him half to death to go. I told him where there was a place about four miles out of town, but the man that owned the farm drove everybody off. Pa said for us to come on. Well, you’d a dide. Pa wasn’t afraid of anybody, until the man hollered to him to git. You see, we went out to the farm, and stationed pa by the fence; and my chum and me went on the other side of a piece of woods, to scare rabbits toward pa. Then we went up to the farm house, where a man lived that we know, and told him we wanted to scare a man out of his boots, and he said all right, go ahead. So we borrowed some farmer’s clothes, and bld plug hats, and went around behind the barn and yelled to pa to get off that farm. Pa said for us to go to, the bad place. He said he came out to hunt rabbits, and by gosh he was going to hunt rabbits. ’ Then my chum and me started toward pa, wading through the snow, and pa thought we were grown men, seven feet high. When we got about twenty rods from pa we told him to ‘ git,’ and he was going to argue with us, when we pulled up our guns • and fired both barrels at him. We had blank cartridges, but pa thought he felt shot str-iking him everywhere, and he started for a barbed wire fence, and we loaded our guns again and fired just as pa got on the fence, and he yelled murder. You know these barbed wire .fences, don’t you ? The barbs catch on your pants, and hang on. Well, pa got caught by the pants, and couldn’t get over, and we kept firing, and he dropped his gnn in the snow, and tried to tear the fence down, and he kept yelling, ‘ For God’s sake, gentlemen, spare my life. I don't want any of your rabbits.’ I got to laughing so I couldn’t shoot, and I laid down in a snow bank, and my chum kept shooting. Pa finally got oft* the fence and burrowed in a snow-bank, and held up a piece of his shirt which the fence tore off, for a flag of truce, and we quit, and he stuck up his head and saw me laying there on the snow, and pa thought his gnn had gone off and killed one of the farmers, and my chum said, “Great hevings, you have killed him 1 ’ At that pa grabbed his gun and run for the road, and started for town, and that’s where the minister overtook him. Along toward night me and my chum came home with four rabbits, and we told pa he was a pretty rabbit hunter to leave before the rabbits got to running, and that we looked all around for him. He looked surprised, and asked us if we struck any corpses around on that farm, and I thought I should bust. We told him we didn’t see any, and then he told us that he was standing there waiting for rabbits, when a gang of about fifteen roughs came and ordered him away, and he refused to go. He said they opened fire on him, and he threw himself into a hallow square, the way they used to do in the army, threw up intrenohments of snow, and defended himself, audwhen he was finally

surrounded and had to retreat, he saw the ground covered with dead and wounded, and he expected he had wiped out an entire neighborhood. He said it was singular we didn't see any corpses. I asked him how he tore his pants, and he said the gang shot them all to piece®. Then we told him of the joke we hail played on him, and how we fired blank cartndges at him as he was trying to get over the fence, and he tried to laugh, but he couldn't. He was inclined to be mad at first, but finally he said this was more like business, and he hadn’t felt as well before since we initiated him into the Masons, and we could play anything on him, and do anything we chose except let him alone. So you see I am not so bad as you think. Pa enjoys it, and so does my chum and me. Eh! old rutabaga, do you see ?” “O, yes, that is all right if your pa likes that kind of fun, but if you was my boy I would maul you till you couldn’t stand.” Just then a big cannon fire-cracker that the boy had lit and laid on the floor exploded and the grocery man went out of the back door bareheaded while the boy went out the front door whistling; “Be sure and cal me early, for I’m to be queen of the May.”— Peck's Sun.