Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 February 1884 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

“There, now, what is your lip hanging down that way for?” said the grocery man to the bad boy as he came in, with an expression on his face of sorrow such as the grocery man had not seen before. “Brace up now and have some style about you. What’s the matter!” jotting the matter with me,” said thlvboy, as he looked around the grocery to see if he couldn’t find something that would taste good to a sick boy. “I am all hunkv, but my chum has got the rheumatiz. ” “Well, that don’t hurt you, does it?” said the grocery man, with one of his heartless expressions. “You don’t want to grunt until you are hurt yourself. There is time enough for you to be limping around when you get sick ’'yourself. I don’t believe in worrying when anybody else is sick.” “Well, you heartless old cuss you. You never had a chum, did you?' If you ever had a chum that you loved, that had stood by you in all kinds of weather, who would work his fingernails off for you, and go without eating and sleeping to make you happy, you could never talk that way. My chum is just as tender as a woman, though he was strong os a giant afore the rheumatiz struck him, and now he is' as weak as a little tiny baby, and we have to handle him just as though he was eggs. Every bone, and muscle, and drop of blood, and piece of skin about his body is just like ma’s neuralgia, and sometimes they all* ache at onoe, and then they take turns aching, and my chum lays there and takes it calmly as though he was at a picnic, and never grumbles. He smiles his great big oldcushioned smile when he sees me looking over the foot-board of his bed, and when Igo up and put my hand on his face, and wipe the perspiration off his forehead, the tears come rolling down his cheeks, and he tries to raise his helpless hand to shake mine, but, he can’t, and he says, ‘Hello, old pard,’ and then he shuts his eyes and the rheumatiz commences whereit left off and goes to grinding him up again. Gosh, if I could pull off my shirt and things and get into his bed and take his place, and let the rheumatiz get in its work oh me for a day, while my chum might go out and slide down hill or kick over a few barrels, and feel bully for awhile, I would enjoy it. But you can’t change works with a fellow that has got rheumatiz. Never had it, did you?’’ “No, I never had it,” said the grocery man, “but I had a brother-in-law who had it once, but he cured himself eating snow. ” “O, get out,” said the boy. “Since my chum has had rheumatiz, every old crank has told me a new cure for it, and I think I will try some new remedy on him, but when I go to his room and see the good doctor who has been brought up amongst rheumatiz, and tell him of the new remedy I have heard of, and he tells me it is all nonsense, that settles it. The idea of curing rheumatiz eating snow 1 Say, isn’t it queer about catching rheumatiz? It is like a lottery. Forty fellows may have the same chance to draw a rheumatic prize, and only one gets it sawed off onto him. Now me and my chum were in the same draft of air, and both had a right to catch the rheumatiz. All I got was wind on my stomach, and I slode down hill head first, on my sled, and the rheumatiz has all blowed away from me. My chum went riding in a coupay. and he got it. Sliding down hill knocks* rheumatiz better than eating snow. Say, I would like to run this world for about a month. By gosh, I would arrange it so nobody but the mean people would be sick. It seems too bad to have these painful diseases strike the best people in the world, don’t it? If I had the running of things, rheumatiz should never attack such a good fellow as my chum. I would have it lay for the thieves, and sand-baggers, and murderers, and high wav robbers, and wife-beaters, and old snarks that never do any good nohow, and keep its claws off of folks that never did any harm, and always had a kind word for everybody. But these diseases seem to have their traps set for the best people, and the thieves aad burglars are the healthiest of the lot. If things were run right rheumatiz ought to be a detective that would catch a horse-thief, just as he was stealing the horse, and make him drop the halter and send for a doctor. If I was bossing rheumatiz I would have it paralyze the arm of the man about to commit murder or whip his wife, and lay him out colder than a wedge. I would have rheumatiz act as a reformatory agent instead of . going around careless and picking on to thoroughbreds. I would have it watch a mean man, when he was going to do something mean, and take hold of him and give his muscles a twist, and then let up, and if he kept on, take him by the neck and double him up and make him yell. But I must go and do my chum’s chores for his ma, and then go and sit up with him. It is singular how my chum knows when I am coming, and how the pain begins to go away when I am there. I think it would do you same good to love some one, old man, some one that was sick sometimes, to whom Eour presence would be a sort of a eaven. If you loved anybody so that the touch of your hand would drive away pain, and the light of your .eye would seem like a benediction, and you could cheer your friend by your light footfall on the carpet, and drive away nervousness by the sound of your voice, and cause happiness to take the place of misery when yon weip around, you would not be half as mean as you are now, and you wouldn’t go off in the dark and hate yourself as you do now What you got in this ranch that would taste good to a feller that hain’t got no appetite?” f “Oh, I don’t know,” said the grocery man, “unless you try some of those dried apples, dried by steam.” “That is a specimen of the way you would treat a chum if you had one who was sick. You would fire dried apples down him. You make me tired. Haven’t you got any Malaga grapes, or Florida oranges? ’ Nothing but dried apples and prunes. Bah 1” and the boy went off to star by Iris chum.— Peck’s Sun,