Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 April 1883 — HIS PA AN ORANGEMAN. [ARTICLE]

HIS PA AN ORANGEMAN.

Peck’s Sun. “Say, will you do me a favor,” asked the bad boy of the grocery man, as he sat down on'the soap box and put his wet boots on the stove. “Well, y-e-s,” said the grocery man hesitatingly, with a feeling that he was liable to be sold, “If you will help me to catch the villain who hangs up those disreputable signs in front of my store, I will. What is it?” “I want you to lick this stamp and put it or this letter. It is to my girl, and I want to fool her,” and the boy handed over the letter and stamp, and while the grocery man was licking it and put it on, the boy filled his 'pockets with dried peaches out of a box. “There that’s a small job,” said the grocery man, as he pressed the stamp on the letter with his thumb and handed it back. “But how are you going to fool her?” “That’s just business,” said the boy, as he held the letter to his nose and smelled of the stamp. “That will make her tired. You 6ee, every time she gets a letter from me she kisses the stamp, because she thinks that I licked it. When she kisses this stamp and gets the fumes of plug tobacco, and stale beer, and limburg cheese and mouldy potatoes, it will knock her down, and then she will ask me what ailed the stamp, and I will tell her I got you to lick it, and then it will make ber sick, and her parents will stop trading here. O, it will paralyze ber. Do you know, you smell like a glue factory. Gosh, I smell you all over the store Don’t you smell anything that smells spoiled?”

The grocery man thought he did 6mell something that was rancid,and he looked, around the stove and finally kicked the boy’s boots off the stove and said. “It’s your boots burning. Gracious, open the door. Whew! And there oome3 a couple of my best customers.” The ladies came in and held their handkerchiefs to their noses, and while they were trading the boy said, as though continuing the conversation: “Yes, pa says the last oleomargarine I got here is nothing but axle grease. Why Jon’t you put your axle grease in a different kind of a package? The only way you can tell axle grease from oleomargarine is in spreading it on pancakes. Pa says axle grease will spread, but your alleged butter just rolls right up and acts likelip salve, or ointment, and is only fit to use on a sore—” At this point the ladies went out of the store in disgust, without buying anything and the groceryman took a dried codfish by the tail and went up to the boy and took him by the neck. “Golblast you, I have a notion to kill you. You have driven away more oustom from this store than your neok is worth. Now you git,” and he struck the boy across the back with the codfish. “That’s just the way with you all,” says the boy, as he put his sleeve up to his eyes and pretended to cry, “when a fellow is up in the world, there is nothing too good for him, but when he gets down, you maul him with a codfish. Since pa drove me out of the house and told me to go shirk for my living, I haven’t had a kind word from anybody. My churn’s dog won’t even follow me,and when a fellow gets.so low down that a dog goes back on him there is nothing left for him to do but loaf around a grocery, or sit on a jury,and I am too young to sit on a jury,though I know more than some of the beats that lay around the court to get on a jury. I am going to drown myself, and my death will be laid to you. They will find evidences of codfish on my clothes, and you will be arrested for driving me to a suicide’s grave. Good-bye, I forgive you,” and the boy started for the door. -

“Hold on here," says the grocery man, feeling that he had been too harsh,“Come back here and have some maple sugar. What did your pa drive you away from home for?” “O, it was on account of St Patrick’s Day," said the bad boy, as he bit off half a pound of maple sugar, and dried his tears. “You see, pa never sees ma buy a new silk handkerchief but he wants it. ’Tother day ma got one of those orangecolored handkerchiefs, and pa immediately had a sore throat and ne wanted to wear it, and ma let him put it on. 1 thought I would break him of taking everything nice that ma got, so when he went down town with the orange handkerchief on his neck, I told some of the St. Patrick boys in the . Third ward, who had green ribbons on, that the old duffer that was putting on style was an orange man, and he said he could whip any 81 Patrick’s Day man in town. The fellers laid for pa, and when he oame along one of them threw a barrel at pa, and another pulled the yellow handkerchief off his neok, and they all yelled ’hang him,’ and one grabbed a rope that was on the sidewalk where they weremopng a buildng and pa got up and dusted. You’d a dide to see pa run. He met a policeman and kaid that more’n a hundred men had

tried to murder him, and they had mauled him and stoled his yellow handkerchief. The policeman told pa his life was not safe, and he better go home and lock himself in, and he did, and I was telling ma about how I got the boys to scare pa, and he heard it, and he told me that settled it. He said I had caused hied to run more foot races than any pedestrian, and had made his life unbearable, and now I must go it alone. Now I want yon to send a couple of pounds of crackers over to the house, and have your boy tell the hired girl' that I [have gone down to the river to drown myself and she will tell ma, and ma will tell pa, and pretty soon you .will see a bald headed pussy man wbsoping it up toward the river with a rope. They may think at times, that lam a little tough, but when it comes to parting forever, they weaken.” “Well, I am going down to the river,and I will leave my coat and hat by the wood yard, and get behind the wood, and you steer pa down there and you will see some tall weeping over them clothes, and may be pa will jump in after me, and then I’ll come out from behind the wood and throw in a board for him to swim ashore on. Good bye. Give my pocket comb to my chum,” and the boy went out and hung up a sign in front of the grocery, as follows: “Pop cOnn ThaT the CAt haS SIEPt iN, cheAp fOr Pop CorN baLns for SoCiaßLes.”