Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1883 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

“I see your pa wheeling the baby around a good deal lately,” said the grocery mau to the bad boy, as he came w the store one evening to buy a stick of striped peppermint candy for tne baby, while ilia pa stopped the babywagon out on the sidewaix and waited for the boy, with an expression of resignation on his face. “vVhat’s got into your pa to be a anrse girl tms hot weather?'’ “Oh, we have had a circus at our house,” said the boy, as he came m after putting the candy in the baby’s hand. “You see, Uncle Ezra came back from Chicago, where he had been to jell some cheese, and he stopped over a couple of days with us, and he sard we must play one more joke on pa before he went home. We played it, anu it’s s wonder lam alive, because I never jaw pa so mad in all my life. Now this is the last time Igo into any jokes on jhares. If I play any more jokes I don’t want any old uncle in to give me a way.” “ What was it?” said the grocery man, as he took a stool and sat out by the front door beside the boy who was trying to eat a box of red raspberries on the sly. “Well, Uncle Ezra and me bribed the nurse-girl to dress the baby up one evening in some old, dirty baby clothes, belonging to our washwoman’s baby, and we put it in a basket, and placed the basket on the front door-step, and put a note in the basket and addressed it to pa. We had the nurse-girl stay oufr in front by the basement stairs, so the baby couldn’t get away, and she rung the bell and got behind something. Ma and pa and Uncle Ezra and me were in the back parlor when the bell rung, and ma told me to go to the door, and 1 brought in the basket and set it down, and told pa there was a note in it for him. Ma, she came up and looked at the note as pa tore it open, and Uncle Ezra looked in the basket and sighed. Pa read part of the note and stamped and turned pale and sat down, then ma read some of it, and she didn’t feel very well, and she leaned against the piano and grated her teeth. The note was in a girl’s handwriting, and was like this: Old Bald-headed Pet—You will have to take care of your child, because I cannot. Bring it up tenderly, and don’t, for Heaven’s sake, send it. to the founding asylum. I shall go drown myself. Your loving Almira. “What did your ma say ?” said v the grocery man, becoming interested. “Oh, ma played her part well. Uncle Ezra had told her tlie joke, and she said ‘retch,’ to pa, just as the aotresses do on the stage, and put her handkerchief to her eyes. Pa said it was ‘false,’ and Uncle Ezra said, ‘Olx, brother, that I should live to see this day,’ and I said, as I looked in the basket, ‘pa, it looks just like you, and I’ll leave it to ma.’ That was too much, and pa got mad in a minute. He always gets mad at me. But he went up and looked in the basket, and he said it was some Dutch baby, and was evidently from the lower strata of society, and the unnatural mother wanted to get rid of it, and he said he didn’t know any ‘Almira’ at all.* When he called it a Dutch baby, and called attention to its irregular features, that made ma mad, and she took it up out of the basket and told pa it was a perfect picture of him, and tried to put it in pa’s arms, but he wouldn’t have it, and said he would call the poliae and have it taken to the poor-house. Uncle Ezra took pa in the comer and told him the best thing he could do would be to see ‘Almira’ and compromise with her, and that made pa mad and he was going to hit Uncle Ezra with a chair. Pa was perfectly wild, and if he had a gun I guess he would have shot all of us. Ma took the baby upstairs and had the girl put it to bed, and after pa got mad enough Uncle Ezra told him it was all a joke, and it was his own baby, that we had put in the basket, and then he was madder than ever, and he told Uncle Ezra never to darken his door again. I don’t know how he made up with ma for calling it a Dutch baby from the Polack settlement, but anyway, he wheels it around every day, and ma and pa have got so they speak again.” “That was a mighty mean trick, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. W here do yoq expect to fetch up when yon die?” said the grocery man. “I told Uncle Ezra it was a mean trick,” said the boy, “but he said that wasn’t a priming to some of the tricks pa had played on him years ago. He says pa used to play tricks on everybody. I may be mean, but I never played wicked jokes on blind people, as pa did when he was a boy. Uncle Ezra says once there was a party of four blind vocalists, all girls, gave an entertainment at the town where pa lived, and they stayed at the hotel where pa tended bar. Another thing, I never sold rum, either, as pa did. Well, before the blind vocalists went to bed pa caught a lot of frogs and put them in the beds where the girls were to sleep, and when the poor blind girls got into bed the frogs hopped all over them, and the way they got oat was a caution. It is bad enough to have frogs hopping all over girls that can see, but for girls that are deprived of their sight and don’t know what anything is, except by the feeling of it, it looks to me like a pretty tough joke. I guess pa is sorry now for what he did, ’cause when Uncle Ezra told the frog story I brought home a frog and put it in pa’s bed. Pa has been afraid of paralysis for years, and when his leg or anything { gets asleep he thinks that is the end of nim. Before bed time I turned the' conversation onto paralysis, and told about a man about pa’s age having it on the West Side, and pa was nervous, and soon after he retired I guess the

frog wanted to get Acquainted with pa, -’cause pa yelled six kinds of murder, and we went into his room. Yon know how cold a frog is ? Well, you’d a dide to see pa. He laid still, andsaid his end had come, and Unde Ezra asked him if it was the end with the bead on, or the feet, and pa' told him paralysis had marked him for a victim, and he could feel that his left leg was becoming dead. He said he could feel the cold, clammy hand of death,, walking up to him, and he wanted ma to put a bottle of hot water to his feet. Ma got the battle of hot water and put it to pa’s feet, and the cork came oat and pa said he was dead, sure enough, now, because he was hot in the extremities, and that a cold wave was going up his leg. Ma asked him where the cold wave was, and he told her, and she thought she would rub it, but she began to yell the same kind of murder pa did, aud said a snake had up her sleeve. Then I thought it was time to stop the circus, and I reached up ma’s sleeve and caught the frog by the leg and pulled it out, and told pa I guessed he had taken my frog to bed with him, and I showed it to him, and then he said 1 did it, and he would maul me so I could not get up alone, and he Baid a boy that would do suoh a thing would go to hell as sure as preachin’ and I asked him if he thought a man who put frogs in the beds with blind girls, when he was a boy, would get to heaven, and then he told me to Lite out, and I lit, I guess pa will feel better when Uncle Ezra goes Away, cause he thinks Uucle Ezra talks too much about old times. Well, here comes our baby-wagon, and I guess pa has done penance long enough, and I will go and wheel the kid awhile. Say, you call pa in, after I take the babywagon, and tell him you don’t know how he would get along without suoh a nice boy as me, and you can charge it in our next months’bill.”— Peck’tt Sun.