Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 June 1883 — THE BAH BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAH BOY.

“Ah, ha, you here got your deserts at last,” stad the grooeryman to the bad boy, as he came in with one eye black, and his nose peeled on one side, and sat down on a board across the coal scuttle, and began whistling as unconcerned as posuble. “What’s the matter with your eye ?” v “Boy tried to gouge it out without asking my consent,” and the bad boy took a dried herring out of the box and began peeling it. “He is in bed now, and his ma is poulticing him, and she says he will be out about the last of next week.” r “Oh, you are going to be a prise fighter, ain't you," said the grooeryman, disgusted. “When a boy leaves a job where he is working, and goes to loafiing around, he’becomes a fighter the first thing. What your pa ought to do is hind yon out with a farmer, where you would have to work all the tune. I wish you would go away from here, because you look like one of these fellows that domes up before the Polioe Judge Monday lfiormng, and gets thirty days in the House of Correction. Why don’t you go out and loaf around a slaughterhouse, where you would look appropriate?” and the grooeryman took a hairbrush and brushed Nome loose sugar and tea, that was on the oonnter, into the sugar-barrel. ? “Well, if you have got through with vour sermon, I will toot a little on my horn,” and the boy threw the remains of the herring over behind a barrel of potatoes; ana wiped his hands on a ooffee sack. “If you had this black eye and had got it the way I did, it would be a more priceless gem in the crown of glory you hope to wear, than any gem you oan get by putting quarters in the collection plate with the holes filled with lead, as yon did last Sunday, when I was watching you. Oh, didn’t you: look pious when you picked that filled quarter out, and held your thumb over the place where the lead waa. The way of the black eye was this. I got a job tending a soda fountain, and last night, just before we olosed, there was two or three young loafers in the place, /and a- girl came in for a glass of soda. Five years ago she was one of the brightest scholars in the ward school, when I was in the intermediate department. She was just as handsome as a peach, and everybody liked her. At recess she used to take my part when the boye knocked me around, and she lived near ns. She had a heart as big as that cheese box, and I guess that's what’s the matter. Anyway she left school, and then it was said she was going to be married to a fellow who is now in the dude business, .but he went back on her and after a while her ma turned her out doors, and for a year or two she was jerking beer in a concert saloon, until the Mayor stopped concerts. She tried hard to get sewing to do, bnt they wouldn’t have her, I guess, ’cause she cried so xhnch when she was sewing, and the tears wet the oloth she was sewing on. Once I asked pa why ma didn’t give her some sewing to do, and he said for me to dry np and never speak to her if I met her on the street. It seemed tuff to pass her on the street, when she had tears in her eyes as big as marbles, and not speak to tier when I know her so well, and she had been* so kind to me at school, just ’cause a dude wouldn't marry her, but I wanted to obey pa, so I used to. walk around a block when I see her coming, ’cause I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Well, last night she came in the store, looking pretty shabby, and wanted a glass of soda, and I gave it to her, and Oh, how her hand trembled when she raised the glass to her Ups, and how wet her eyeawere, and how pale her face was! I choked up so I couldn’t speak when she handed me the niokel, and when she looked up at me and smiled just like she used to, and said I was getting to be almost a man since we went to school at the old school-house, and put her handkerchief to her eyes, by gosh, my eyes got so fuU I couldn’t tell whether it was a nickel or. a lozenger the gave me. Just then one of those loafers began to laugh at her, and call her names, and say the police ought to take her up for a stray, and he made fun of her until she cried some more, and I got hot and went around to where he was end told him if he said another unkind word to that girl I would maul him. He laughed and asked if she was my sister, and I told him that a poor, friendless girl, who was sick and in distress, and who was insulted, oughi .to be every boy’s sister, for a minute, and any hoy who had a spark of manhood should protect her, and then he laughed and said I ought to be one of the Little Sisters of the Poor, and he took hold of her faded shawl and pulled the weak frirl against the show-ease, and said something moan to her, and she looked as though she wanted to die, and I mashed that boy one right on the nose. Well; the air seemed to be fnU of me for a minute, cause he was bigger than me, and he got me down ana got his thumb in my eye. I guess he was going to take my eye out, but I turned him over -fifed got on top and I miuled him miu he begged, bat I wouldn’t let him up tQI be asked the girl’s pardon, and swore he would whip any boy that insulted her, and then I let him up, and the girl thanked me, but I told her I couldn’t speqk to her, cause she was tuff, and pa didn’t want me to speak to anybody who was tuff, but it anybody ever insulted her so she had to cry, that I would whip him if I had to take a olub. nagged me, and the team come n ms

- • v* ; would show him the father of the boy that I whipped, pa said he woflpwlrfp the old man, and ma said for miuofind the poor girl and send her up*!? the house and sne would give her a job making pillow-cases and night shirts. Don’t it seem darn queer to you that everybody goes back on a poor girl cause she makes a mistake, the blasted whelp that is to blame gets a ohromo. It makes me tired to think of it,” and the boy got up and shook himself, and looked in the cracked mirror hanging upon a post, to see how his eye was getting along. ’ “Say, young fellow, you are a thoroughbred,” stud the grooeryman, as be sprinkled some water on the asparagus and|lettuce, “and you can come in here and 1 get all the herring you want, and never mind the black eye. I wish I had it myself. Yea, it does seem tough to see people never allow a girl to reform. Now, in Bible times, the Savior forgave Mary, or somebody, I forget now what bar name was, and she was a better girl than eves. What we need is more of the spirit of Ohrist, and the wotld would be better.” “What we want is about 10,000 Christs. We ought to have ten or fifteen right here in Milwaukee, and they would find plenty of business, too. But this climate seems to be too rough. Say, did 1 tell you pa and ma are having trouble?” * * “No, what’s the row ?” “Well, you see, ma wants to economize all she oan, and pa has boon getting thinner ainoe he quit drinking and reformed, and I have kept on growing until lam bigger than he is. Funny, ain’t it, that a boy should be bigger than his pa? Pa wanted a new suit of olothes, and ma said she would fix him, and so she took one of my old suits and made it over for pa, and he wore them a week before he knew it was an old suit made over, but one day he found a handful of dried-up angleworms in the pistol pocket that I had forgot when I was fishing, and pa laid the angleworms to ma, ana ma had to explain that she made over one of my old suits for pa. He was mad, and took them off and threw them out the baok window, and swore he would never humiliate himself by wearing his son’s old olothes. Ma tried to reason with him, but he was awful worked up and said he was no old charity hospital, and he stormed around to find his old suit of clothes, but ma had sold them to a plaster of paris image peddler, and pa hadn’t anything to wear, and he wanted ma to go out in the alley and pick up the suit he threw out the window, but a rag-man had picked them up and waa going away, and pa he grabbed a linen duster and put it on and went out after the rag-picker, and he run and pa after him, ana the rag-man told a policeman there was an escaped lunatic from the asylum and ha was chasing people all over the city, and the policeman took him to the police-station. Ma and me had to go down and hail him out, and the polioe lent us a tarpaulin to put over pa, and we got him home, ana ha is wearing his summer pants while the tailor makes him a new pair of olothes. I think pa is too excitable Mid too particular. I never kicked on wearing £a’s old olothes, and I think he ought > wear mine now. Well, I must go down to the sweetened-wind factory gad jerk soda,” and the boy went out and hung up a sign in front of the store, “Spinage, for greens, that the oat ;has made e nest in over Sunday.”—Peck’s Sun. » . ■ . , .