Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1883 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

Peck’sSnn. 4 * > “Well, great Julius Ceasar’s bald-head-ed ghost, what’s the matter with you,” eaid the grocery man to the boy, as he came into the grocery on crutches, with one arm in a sling, one eye blackened, and a strip of court plaster across one side of his face. “Where was the explosion, or have you been in a fight? Or has your pa been giving you what you deserve, with a dub? Here, let me help you. There, sit down on that keg of ap-ple-jack. Well, by the great guns, you look as though you had called somebody a liar. What’s the matter?” and the grocery man took the crutches and stood them up against the showcase. “Oh, there’s not much the matter with me,” said the boy in a voice that sounded all broke up, as he took a big apple off the basket and began peeling it with his upper front teeth. “If you think lam a wreck you ought to see the minister. They had to carry him home in instalments, the way they buy sewing machines. lam all right, but they have got to stop him up with oakum and tar before he will ever hold water again.” “Good gracious, you have not had a fight with the minister, have you? Well, I have said all the time, and I stick to it, that you would commit a crime and go to State prison. What was the fuss about?” and the grocery man laid the hatchet out of the boy’s reach for fear he would get excited and kill him. “O, it want no fuss. It was in the way of business. You see the, livery man that lam working for promoted me. He let me drive a horse to haul sawdust for bedding, first, and when he found I was real careful he let me drive an express wagon to haul trunks. Day before yesterday, I think it was—(Yes, I was in bed all day yesterday}—day before yesterday there was a funeral, and our stable furnished the outfit It was only a common eleven dollar funeral, so they let me go to drive the horse tor the minister—yon know, the buggy that goes ahead of the hearse. They gave me an old horse that is thirty years old, that has not been oft of a walk since nine years ago, and they told me to give him a loose rein, and he would go along all right It's the same old hoise that used to pace so fast on the avenue, years ago, but I didn’t know it Well, Iwan't to blame. I just let him walk along as though he was hauling sawdust, and gave him a loose rein. When we got off of the pavement the fellow that drives the hearse, he was in a hurry, ’cause his folks was going to have ducks for dinner, and be wanted to get back, so he kept driving along side of my buggy, and telling me to hurry up. I wouldn’t do it, ’cause the livery man told me to walk the horse. Then the minister, he got nervous, and said he

didn’t know as there was any use of going so slow, because he wanted to get back in time to get his lunch and go to a minister's meeting in the afternoon, but I told him we would all get to the cemetery soon enough if we took it cool, and as for me I wapn tin no sweat Then one of the drivers that was driving the mourners, he came up and said he had to get back in timejbo run a welding down to the one o’clock train, and for me to pull out a little. I have seen enough of disobeying orders. I told him a funeral in the hand was worth two weddings in the bush, and as far as I was concerned this funeral was going to be conducted in a decorous manner, if we didn’t get back till the next day. Well, the minister said in his regular Sunday-school way, ‘My little man, let me take hold of the lines,’ and like a darn fool I gave them to him. He slapped the old horse on the crupper with the lines, and then jerked up,and the hearse driver then told the minister to pull hard and saw on the bit a little, and the old horse would wake up. The hearse driver used to drive the old pacer on the track, and he knew what he wanted. The

minister took off his black kid gloves and put his umbrella down between us, and pulled his hat down tight on his head, and began to pull and saw on the bit. The old cripple began to move along sort of sideways, like a hog going to war, and the minister pulled some more, and the hearse driver, who was right behind, he said, so you could hear him clear to Waukesha, *Ye-e-up,’ and the old horse kept going faster, then the minister thought the procession was getting too quick, and he pulled harder, and yelled ‘who-a,’ and that made the old horse worse, and I looked through the little window in the buggy top, behind, and the hearse was two blocks behind, and the driver was laughing,and the minister be got pale and said, My little man, I guess,you’d better drive,’ and I said ‘Not much Mary Ann; you wouldn’t let me run this funeral the way I wanted to, and now you can boss it, if you will let me get out,’ but there was a street-car ahead and all of a sudden there was an earthquake, and when I come to there were about six hundred people pouring water down my neck, and he hearse was hitched to the fence, and the hearse driver was asking if my leg v as broke, and a policeman was fanning the minister with a plug hat that looked

as though it had been struck by a pile* driver, and some men buggy into the gutter, and somOngK; were trying to take the old pacer out of the windows of the street oar, and then l guess I fainted away agin. O, it was warsethan telescoping a train loaded with cattle.” ; . “Well, I swan,” said the grocery as he put some eggs in a funnel shaped brown paper for a servant girl. “What did the minister say when he come to?” “Say! What could he say? He yelled ‘whoa,’ and kept sawing with hi# hands as though he was driving. I heard the policeman was going to pull him for ast driving, till he found it was an accident They told me, when they carried me home in a hack, that it was a wonder everybody was not killed, and when I got home pa was going to sass me, until the hearse driver told him it was the minister that was to blame. I want to find out if they got the minister’s umbrella back. But lam all right, only my shoulder sprained, and my legs bruised, and my eye black. I will be all right and shall go to work to-merrow, ’cause the livery man says I was the only one in the crowd that had any sense. I understand the minis ter is going to take a vacation on account of his liver and nervous prostration. I would if I was him. I never saw a man that had nervous prostration any more than he did when they fished him out of the barbed wire fence, after we struck the street car. But that settles the minister business with me. I don’t drive for no more preachers. What I want is a quiet party that wants to go on a walk,” and the boy got up and hopped on one foot towards his crutches, filling bis pistol pocket with figs as he hobbled along.)

“Well, sir,” said the grocery man, as he took a chew of tobacco out of a pail, and offe r ed some to the boy knowing that was the only thing in the store the boy would not take, “Do you know I think some of these ministers have about ,as little sense on worldly matters, as ‘anybody? Now, the idea of that man jerking on an old pacer. It don’t make any difference if the pacer was a hundred years old, he would pace if he yas jerked on.” “Ycu bet,” said the boy, as he put his crutches under his arms, and started for the door, “A minister may be sound on the Atonement, but he don’t want to saw on an old pacer. He may have the subject of infant baptism down finer than a cambric needle, but if he has ever been to college, he ought to have leaded enough not to say ’ye-up, to an old pacer that has been the boss of the road in his time A minister may be endowed with sublime power to draw sinners to repentance, and make them feel like getting up and dusting for the beautiful beyond, and (cause them,by his eloquence, to see angels bright and fair in their dreams,and chariots-or fire flying through the pearly gates and down the golden streets of the New Jerusalem, but he wants to turn out for a street oar all the same, when he is driving a 2:20 pacer. The next time I drive a minister to a funeral, he will walk,” and ,the boy hobbled out and hung out a sign in front of the grocery, “Smoked dog fish at halibut prices, good enough for company.”