Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 April 1884 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

“Your pa got OTer being s;arod oat of his boots?” said the grocery man to he bad boy, as he took up a handfal of hickory-nuts and began cracking them between a conple of fire-pound weights on the counter. “ What do yon mean ? Who told you pa had been scared?” asked the boy, as he put his thumb in his mouth, after knocking the nail off with a weight. “I didn’t know as anybody knew anything about it but me and the girl." “O, a brakeman that runs on the Chicago train was here this morning, and he told me your pa came up on the train last night, and along there about Kenosha he went through tlje train as though he had been kicked, and got into the postal car and crawled under a lot of mail sacks, and rode all the way to Milwaukee, sweating like a butcher, and as pale as a ghost. What was it all about? You haven’t been playing another trick on him, have you?” and the grocery man picked up the hickorynuts the boy had left and threw them in the basket, while the boy wrapped a handkerchief around his thumb and looked mad. „ “No, I didn’t play anything on him, but I saved his life. He is an old smarty, and got himself into a scrape. \ou see, pa aud me went down to Chicago on a pas 3 pa got somehow in politics. We took in tho Battle of Gettysburg, where a fello# can see all about the war without getting shot in the back. We came back on the 5 o’clock train, and of course pa couldn’t sit with me, but had to go and sit down in the seat with a girl that was alone. Pa hasn’t got any more sense than a cow about such tilings. A girl don’t want an old duffer io sit with her. What she wants is a young feller, that has got bear’s oil on bis hair, and smells sort of drug-store liko. But pa thinks be is just as entertaining as when lie was young, and if he went into a car where ail the seats but one was vacant, aud that one had a girl in it, he would go up to her in liis insinuating way, and take off his plug hat aud show his bald head and sav, "Miss, is this seat engaged?” and before she had time to say anything he would sit down with her and begin talking about something she didn’t care any more about than she would about the process of embalming Egyptian mummies. Well, pa sat down by a girl who was knitting, and lie began lo talk sweet. He said lie was a traveling man, getting sii,ooo a year and a share of the profits. He found fault with the railroads, the cars, the hotels, and everything, and to hear him talk you would think he was reared in a palace, always traveled on special cars, and was worth $11,000,000. I sat behind him, and heard what he said, and it was all I could do to keep from asking him if he thought ma would ba expecting us home to-night, but I have had experience enough with pa to know that when he is engaged in business that causes his brain to expand aud throb, that the safest way is to keep still. He told the girl she was purty, and asked her all about herself, and if she was going far, and ho put his arm on the back of the seat, and acted as though lie was going to bug her, but he didn’t, cause just as his arm began to get real near to the girl’s small of tier back, I imitated the brakeman and shouted, ‘Lake Forest,’ and pa thought the brakeman was right behind him, and he drawed liis arm away so quick he hit the funny bone of his elbow on the back of the seat, and it hurt him like everything. The girl luffed, and pa blushed, and in a little while he had his arm there again. The conductor and the brakeman watched pa, and just as he got close to the girl, and was whispering to her,the conductor touched him on his shoulder and asked him what the number of bis pass was. Pa had to take his arm aw..y to got his pass, and then he put it back again, and was commencing where he left off, to give the girl some taffy, when the brakeman touched pa on the shoulder, and asked him if it was his dog in the baggage car, chewing the hinges off the trunks. Pa said he didn’t have no dog, and the brakeman went away. The girl was real disgusted with pa, and I could Ree she wanted to have a rest. Just before the train got to Waukegan the girl said she wanted to send a dispatch to Racine, and pa gave her some paper and she wrote a message and asked pa to send it for her. Pa didn’t want to leave his seat, so he said to me, ‘Here, little boy, you get off at Waukegan and send this message for tho beautiful young ladv-y’ and lie gave mo the dispatch and a dollar. I went out at Wakegan, and read the message and didn’t send it. It read like this, ‘Father, come dow'n to tho depot with a horsewhip. There is an old drunkard on the train who has made-himself very obnoxious to ine, and I want you to maul him within an inch of his life.’ Well I wouldn’t contribute to pa’s being mauled, so I kept it, and after the train left Waukegan I called pa into the other end of the car and told him I didn’t think it was best to send that dispatch, so I kept it. He was mad in a minute and told me I had no right to think anything. "When I was told to do a thing it was my business to do it, and ask no quostions. He said he was ashamed of me, and told me when the train got to Kenosha to go right out and send it quick. He was going to start back to talk with the girl some more when I handed him the dispatch, and told him to read it, and then if ho wanted me to send it I would. He read it, and his face got as white as chalk, and the few hairs on his head raised right up so they were stiff’ enough to tack down a carpet with, and big drops of perspiration Btood out all over his face, and his collar just wilted right down, and he was not half as tall as before. ‘Don’t say anything about this,’ he said in a whisper. ‘I know the clerk in the mail car, and he has often wanted me to ride with hiin, and I guess I will go in there. There is not air enough in this car.’ Pa went forward about i s sudden as you often see an old man go while a train is in motion, and I went and sat down behind tho girl. I said to her, ‘The old party who sat with you has gono out to ride on tho cow-catcher to get cooled off.’ She said she wished lie would fall off and get left. 1 asked her if tho old man was her pa, and she said he was an old fool,

j and I agreed with her and we had quite a nice visit. I think if old people would keep oat of the way, and not be so fresh, ' young people could have more fun. I sat down in the seat with her, and got 1 real well acquainted, and when she got j off at Baoine, I helped her off, and I | could imagine pa in the postal car just a sweating. Well, pa didn’t show up : rill we got to Milwaukee, and then he | came out of the side door of the postal car all mussed up, and smelling mildewed like old sacks. He asked me if I noticed any unusual commotion at Racine, and I told him there was nothing special, only there was an old prize- ! fighter on the depot steps with a black- ; snake whip, and lots of people seeming i to expect a row, and I guess the girl j sent another dispatch. Pa shivered i and said, ‘Let this be warning to yon, | my boy, not to ever allow any female j strangers to get acquainted with you, | and become familiar.’ I told pa I didn’t j see any barm in it, ’cause I rede all the | way with that girl, after he left, and j she seemed to like it, and never once j thought of having me horse-whipped. ! Pa is getting calm again, but it will be a long time before bis hair lays down smooth again, the way it did before he got scared.” , “Well, your pa is a la-la,” said the grocery man, “and ought to be kept locked up as a monk in a monkery, somewhere.” The bad boy agreed that a monkery was about the prescription his pa needed, and he went out and caught on behind a cutter and was tipped off in the slush, and went home to run himself through a clothes wringer.— Peck’s Sun.