Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 June 1884 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

“Give me small bills for a five,” 6aid the alleged bad boy, as he went into the grocery, followed by two meeklooking, pleasant-faced Sisters of Charity. The grocery man gave him the change, he handed one of the darkly dressed ladies $2, received thanks and the Sisters bowed and went out, while the boy rolled up his $3 in a piece of tissue paper and put it in his pistol pocket, and watched the grocery man, who seemed to be mad. “Well, you are the darndest fool I ever Baw,” said the grocery man. “You haven’t got sense enough to go in when it rains,” and he brushed some crumbs of crackers, sugar, and tea firom off the counter into a barrel of ground coffee. “What’s the matter with me now ?" said the boy. “Have I got to take my regular weekly blowing up ?” “Matter? Matter enough,” said the grocery man, as he sneered at the boy. “You go and earn $5, and the first person that asks you for money, you give it to them. Now, them Sisters of Charity could buy and sell you, every day in the week, and yet they kanoodle you out of $2. They don’t belong to your church, and yet you contribute to their enterprises. I would not give them a condemned cent What are they going to do with*that money? How do you know but that they will spend it for clothes ? I heard onoe that these Sisters of Charity had a high old time when they were inside the walls of the place they stay in, and that they laugh right out loud. They couldn’t fool me with any of their stories.” “Well, for a mean old grumbler, yon take the whole bakery,” said the boy, as he picked up a rolling pin as though he wanted to maul the grooeryman. “Yon have got about as much charity about you as a goat. You ought to be put on exhibition at a museum as the champion mean man of the nineteenth century. I could excuse you for finding fault with anything I have ever done, but this; but when you abuse poor Sisters of Charity, meek angels of mercy, you are beneath even the contempt of a bad boy. Those ladies are the purest of their sex, devoting their lives to doing good, with no hope of reward except when they die. Those ladies are two of the Little Sisters of the Poor, and they care tenderly for old people who have no homes, no money, and no friends. They are getting money to put on an addition to their building, and pa gave them $lO, and I told pa I would like to take a little stock iu that scheme myself, and he said I could if I wanted to, and so I happened to meet them and told them I had rather have, $2 stock in their mine than to buy pools in a base-ball match, as you did last Saturday, and they said they were not canvassing among children, but if I wanted to aid them and could afford it, they could see no objections, so I took $2 stock. What do I care if their religion is different from our folks’, and what does my pa care ? They feed and clothe poor old folks, regardless of their religion. If I had gone in company with you last Saturday and bought $2 worth of pools in the base-ball match, and had won a dollar, you would have given me credit for being awful smart. You wduld have said I had a head on me like a chief justice, and yet I would have been only a plain, common gambler, like yourself. I would have felt mean as you do now. You lost your money on the base-ball match, and feel mad at everybody, and abuse Sisters of Charity, ladies who are always the first to appear at any scene of accident or calamity, to soothe the last hours of the sick or afflicted. Your investment in base-ball pools makes you a dyspeptic grumbler, who looks upon the whole world as a colossal swindle. My investment in stock in the enterprise of caring for old people that are homeless makes me happy, and all tlio world seems to me bright on this pleasant morning. I may never get a dividend on my stock that will show up at the bank, but if you and I should start for heaven this afternoon, and you should present your basoball pool ticket to St. Peter at the gate, and I should have nothing with mo but the reflection of the heavenly smilo of that Sister of Charity that I gavo the the two dollars to, which of us do you think St. Peter would take the most stock in ? He would fire you put, and if lie didn’t let me in, ho would at least steer me on to some place where there was a hole m the fence about my size. And if the pool-seller that you invested your money with, had sent up his bools to St. Peter, to be looked over, and the Little Sisters of the Poor hod sent their books, which book had you rather your name would be found in. Now, I guess you are about as ashamed of yourself as you ever will be, and if you want to chip in toward the Sisters of Charity, and want to give a few dollars, not only to help along the scheme but as a sort of apology for your unkind remarks about the good Sisters, I think I could catch up with them down there by the Postoffice somewhere, and give it to them, and say that the nice old gentleman who keeps the grocery had sent it.” “All right: here’s $5,” said the grocery man, as he pulled out a leather wallet and began to unroll it, spilling some old pool tickets on the counter. “Give it to them as coming from the blamedest old fool in Wisconsin, but don’t say anything about the conversation.” And'the grocery man handed the money to the bad boy, who went out on a run looking for the Sisters, while the grocery man took his pool tickets and tore them up and threw them out tno back door, and said: “Well, that boy beats ’em alL”— Peck's Sim.

“The boy I am looking at,” said the cross-eyed schoolma’am, “will come here to me and get the whipping he deserves.” Every*boy in the room starts forward. The schoolma’am postpones the matinee. That noble Indian, Horse-Eating-AJI-Over the-Gronnd, is under arrest for stealing. Horsey was doubtless driven to crime by reverses in Wall street. ' ' « *'