Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 March 1884 — THE BAD BOY [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY

“Take care, there, you will run right over the stove,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came along the floor, hie eyes fixed as though he were looking into the future about two years, and his mind so occupied that he did. not seem to see the stove. “"What you thinking about ? Lately you have got so yon think too much, and by and by you will be one of these vacancies that don’t know beans. People are getting so they think too much, and especially boy 6. Nothing hurts a boy so much as to get in the habit of thinking. What did yon have on your mind when you came in?” “Oh, I was thinking of that feller down in the Third Ward that killed his girl and then killed himself, all on account of their religion j>eing a different brand, so they couldn’t marry each other. Gosh, it don’t seem as though religion ought to bar a feller out of the heaven of his girl’s love, does it?” said the boy. « “Well,” said the grocery man, as he wiped some sirup off his hands on a coffee sack, “you can’t drive two kinds of religion to the pole, in a family, with any kind of success. You may drive two kinds of religion single or tandem, but when you hitch ’em up together, and they try to travel along at a good road gait, one will go off its feet aud gallop, while the other trots, and then the galloping religion w*ill catch and come down to a trot, and the other will break up, and there they are, see-saw-ing, and the air full of creeds and doc-' trines, and there is danger they will run away and smash something. No, it is better for the people who are going to marry to have tueir measures taken for the same kind of religion, and then each can wear the other’s religion, aud all will be lovely. ” “I don’t know,” says the bad boy, taking an apple, “about this thing of waiting till you find out about a girl’s religion before yon lovo her. Sometimes yon can’t do it. If a girl has not got any sign out warning a fellow what kind of religion slie-lias got concealed about her person, how is he going to know until it is everlastingly too late ? When a young feller falls iu love with a girl, it is like falling down on skates. Everything seems to give way at once. It strikes him like a sand-bag, and there he is, asphyxiated the first thing. He knows that she is perfeot, and he takes her right into his heart and wraps his heart around her, and puts rubber weather strips on all the cracks so she can’t get out, and her religion is the last thing he thinks of. If her religion pulls her one wayj and his heart pulls her ’tother way, something’s got to bust; sometimes it’s the religion that bnsts, and sometimes it’s the heart. I think there ought to be a convention composed of delegates from all kinds of religion, and let them make a law that any religion shall be legal tender anywhere, like a gold dollar. Religion ought to be pure gold, good anywhere. If a man comes in here to buy soap, and gives you a gold dollar, coined in Rome, or Jerusalem, or California, or China, or Russia, or the Eeejee Islands, he gets his soap. But if your son is in love with a Hebrew girl, her religion says your son’s religion is counterfeit, and Bhe goes to her grave with your son’s love in her heart, and he goes to the devil with her image in his heart, and both are ruined for life ’cause they couldn’t match their religions. A Baptist girl falls in love with a young fellow that is a perfect specimen of manhood, brave, noble, intelligent, tender to her, and as kind as a man can be, and they begin to plan for the day when he can take her to a home and be all the world and a small section of heaven to her, when some day a friend says to her, “Your lover is one of the noblest men I ever saw, but it is a pity he is a Catholic.” Then the trouble commences. He believes his religion is the grandest in the world, aud she believes hers is bo slouch; each tries to induce the other to adopt another i religion, bht it is a failure, and they drift apart in all except the buried love that can never be quenched on earth or in heaven. I tell you it is pretty tongh to have so many different kinds of religion that can’t be made to jibe; don’t you think so 1” “Yes, it is rough,” said the grocery man, “but a little difference like that hadn’t ought to make a fellow kill the girl he loved.” “Course not, ” said the boy. “This feller surely didn’t love the girl, else he wouldn’t shoot. Say, s’pose you loved a girl, regular old spontaneous kind! Could yon pull out a revolver and send two bullets into her pretty cheek, and cord her up against the fence dead? Naw, yon couldn’t. Nor anybody else. He didn’t love that girl. He thought he did, but it was something else. You see, if he had loved her, not having any particular religion hisself, he would have let her take him by the hand and lead him tp her church like a child, and he would have got down on his knees and prayed with her, und become her brother in the church, aud then married her. But he Was wron g in the head, and when he found that she loved her church he got jealous of her religion, that was all, and as long as he couldn’t kill her religion, he killed her. By Jinks, if it was some fellows, they would join any ohurch that ever was for the girl they loved. Pa says he knew a man that got in love with a Jewess, ond her folks tried to stand him off, but he joined thoir church and opened a pawn shop, and got a rabbi, to marry them on the sly, and when her folks came blowing around he put up,his hand and shook it and said, ‘Hast dogeshen. Yot you going to do apout it 7 Ma says she and pa had a good deal of trouble about their religion before they were married. She was a Baptist and pa was a Democrat, but pa kicked when they nominated Greeley, and goes to her cliuroh now. Well, I must go down to the morgue and see the lovers that oonldn’t agree about going to heaven,” and the boy skipped.— Peck’s Sun. Queen Pomabe V., of Tahiti, is on inveterate cigarette smoker. She is described as vivacious, affable, polite, and refined. She speaks English fluently, and, while not a handsome woman, is exoeedingly good looking. In the bloom of youth no ornament is so lovely as that of virtue.