Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1883 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

“You look sleepy,” said the grocery - man to the bad boy, as he came in the store yawning, and stretched himself sut on the counter with 'his head on a pile of brown wrapping paper, in reach of a box of raisins; •‘what’s the matter? Been sitting up with your girl all night?” “Naw! I wish I had. Wakefulness with my girl is sweeter and more restful than sleep. No, this is the result of being a dutiful son, and I am tired. You see, pa and ma have separated. That is, not for keeps, but pa has got frightened about burglars, and he goes up into the attic to sleep. ; He says it is to get fresh air, but he knows better. Ma has got so accustomed to pa’s snoring that she can’t go to sleep without it, and the first night pa left she didn’t sleep a wink, and yesterday I was playon an old accordeon that I traded a dog-collar for after our dog was poisoned, and when I touched the low notes I noticed ma dozed off to sleep, it sounded so much like pa’s snore, and last night ma made me sit up and play for her to sleep. She rested splendid, but lam all broke up, and I sold the accordeon this morning to the watchman who watches our block. It is queer what a different effect music will have on different people. While ma was sleeping the sleep of innocence under the influence of my counterfeit of pa’s snore, the night-watchman was broke of his rest by it, and he bought it of me to give it to the son of an enemy of his. Well, I have quit jerking soda. ” •’No, you don’t tell me,” said the grocery man, as he moved the box of raisins out of reach. “You never will amount to anything unless you stick to one trade or profession. A rolling hen never catches the early angleworm. ” “Oh, but lam all right now. In the soda business there is no chance for genius to rise, unless the soda fountain explodes. It is all wind, and one gets tired of constant fizz. He feels that he is a fraud, and when he puts a little sirup in a tumbler, and tires a little sweetened wind and water in it,until the soaps sud tills the tumbler, and charges 10 cent for that which only costs a cent, a sensitive soda-jerker, who has reformed, feels that it is worse than three-card monte. I couldn’t stand the wear on my conscience, so I have got a permanent job as a super, and shall open the Ist of September” “Say, what’s a super ? It isn't one es these tree-lunch places, that the Mayor closes at midnight, is it ?” and the grocery man looked sorry. “O thunder, you want salt on you. A super is an adjunct to the stage. A supe is a fellow that assists the stars and things, carrying chairs and taking up carpets, and sweeping the sand off the stage after a dancer has danced a jig, and he brings beer for the actors, and helps lace up corsets, and anything that he can do to add to the effect of the play. Privately, now, I have been acting as a supe for a long time, on the sly, and my folks didn’t know anything about it, but since I reformed and decided to be good I felt it my duty to tell ma aud pa about it. The news broke ma all up at first, but pa said some of the best actors in this country were stipes once, and some of them were now, and he thought suping would be the making of me. Ma thought going on the stage would be my ruination. She said the theater was the hotbed of sin, and brought more ruin than the church could head off. But when I told her that they always gave a supe two or three extra tickets for his family, she said the theater had some redeeming features, and when I said my entrance upon the stage would give me a splendid opportunity to get the recipe for face powder from the actresses for ma, and I could find out how the actresses managed to get number four feet into number one shoes, ma said she wished I would commence suping right off. Ma says there are some things about the theater that are not so alfired bad, and she wants me to get seats for the first comic opera that comes along. Pa wants it understood with the manager that a supe’s father has a right to go behind the scenes to see that no harm befalls him, but I know what pa wants. He may seem pious, and all that, but he likes to look at ballet girls better than any meek and loifly follower I ever see, and some day you will hear music in the air. Pa thinks theaters are very bad, when he has to pay a dollar for a reserved seat, but when he can get in for nothing as a relative of one of the ‘perfesh,’ the theater has many redeeming qualities. Pa and ma think I am going into the business fresh and green, but I know all about it. When I played with McCullough here once —” “Oh, what you giving us,” said the grocery man, in disgust, “when you played with McCullough! What did you do?” “What did I do? Why, you old seed cucumber, the whole play centered around me. Do you remember the scene in the Roman forum, wljpre McCullough addrbqsed the populace of Rome. I wife the populace. Don’t you, remembfer a small feller standing in front of the Roman orator taking it in; with a night shirt on, with bare legs and arms ? That was me, and everything depended on me. Suppose I had gone off the stage at the critical moment or laughed when I should have looked fierce at the inspired words of the Roman Senator, it would have been a dead give-away on McCullough. As the populace of Rome I consider myself a ghttering success, and Me took me by the hand when they carped Caesar’s dead body out, and he said, ‘us three did ourselves proud.’ Such praise from McCullough is seldom accorded to a supe. But I don’t consider the popu-

lace of the imperial citv of Rome my master piece. Where ! excel is in coming out before the curtain between the acts, and unhooking the carpet. Some supes go out and turn their backs to the audience, showing patches on their panto, and rip up the carpet with no style about them, and the dust flies, and the boys yell ‘supe,’ and the supe gets nervous and forgets his cue, and goes off tumbling over the carpet, and the orchestra leader is afraid the supe will fall on him. Bqt Igo out with a quiet dignity that is only gained by experience, and I take hold of the carpet the way Hamlet takes up the skull of Yorick, and the audience is paralyzed. I kneel down on the carpet to unhook it, in a devotional way that makes the audience bow their heads as though they were in church, and before they realize that I am only a supe I have the carpet unhooked and march out the way a ’Piacopal minister does when he goes out between the acts at church to change his shirk They never *guy’ me, ’cause I act well my part. But I kick on holding dogs for actresses. Some supes think they are made if they can hold a dog, but I have an ambition that a pug dog will not fill. I held Mary Anderson’s cud of gum once, while she went on the stage, and when she came off and took her gum her fingers touched mine, and I had to run my fingers in my hair to warm them, like a fellow does when he has been snowballing. Gosh, but she would freeze ice cream without salt. I shall be glad when the theatrical season opens, ’cause we actors get tired laying off.” “Well, I’d like to go behind the scenes with you some night,” said the grocery man, offering the bad boy an orange to get solid with him, in view of future complimentary rickets. “No danger, is there?” “No danger if you keep off the grass. But .you’d died to see my Sundayschool teacher one Saturday night last summer. He keeps books in a store, and is pretty soon week days, but he can tell you more about Daniel in the lion’s den on Sunday than anybody. He knew I was solid at the theater, and wanted me to get him behind the scenes one night, and another supe wanted to go to the sparring match,and I thought it wouldnt be any harm to work my teacher in, so I got him a job that night to hold fflie dogs for the “Uricle Tom’s Cabin” show. He was in one of the wings holding the chains, and the dogs were just anxious to go on, and it was all my teacher could do to hold them. I told him to wind the chains around his wrists, and he did so, and just then Eliza began to skip across the ice, and we sicked on the blood-hounds before my teacher could unwind the chains from his wrists, and the dogs pulled him right out on the stage, on his stomach, and drawed him across, and he jerked one dog and kicked him in the stomach, and the dog turned on my teacher and took a mouthful of his coat tail and shook it, and I guess the dog got some meat, anyway the teacher climbed up a step-ladder and the dogs treed him, and the step-ladder fell down, tfiid we grabbed the dogs and put some courtplaster on the teacher’s nose, where the fire-extinguisher peeled it, and he said he would go home, cause the theater was demoralizing in its tendencies. I ’spose it was not right, but when the teacher stood up to hear our Sunday-school lesson the next day, ’cause he was tired where the dog bit him, I said ‘sick-em,’ in a whisper, when his back was turned, and he jumped clear over to the Bible-class and put his hand around to his coattail, as though he thought the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” party were giving a matinee in the church. The Sundavschool lesson was about the dog’s licking the sores of Lazarus, and the teacher said we must not confound thp good dogs of Bible-time with the savage beasts of the present day, that would shake the daylights out of Lazarus and make him climb the cedars of Lebanon quicker than you could say Jack Robinson, and go off chewing the cud of bitter reflection on Lazarus’ coat-tail. I don’t think a Sunday-school teacher ought to bring up personal reminiscences before a class of children, do you? Well, some time next fall you put on a clean shirt and a pair of sheetiron pants, with stove-legs on the inside, and I will take you behind the .scenes to see some good moral show. In the meantime, if you have occasion to talk with pa, tell him that Booth and Barrett and Keene commenced on the stage as supes, and Salvini roasted peanuts in the lobby of some theater. I want our folks to feel that I am taking the right course to become a star. I prythe au reservoir! Igo hens, but to return. Avaunt!" And the bad boy walked out on his toes a la Booth.— Peck’s Sun.