Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1883 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

“Well, I swow, here cirtnes a walking hospital,” said the grocery man as the bad boy's shadow came in the store, followed by the boy who looked sick and yellow, and tired, and l>e Lad Idst half his flesh. “What’s (he matter with you? Haven’t got the s yellow fever, nave you?” find the grocery man placed a chair where the invalid could fall into it. , j J - “No. Got the ager,” said the boy, ns he wiped the jJfirspiration off his upper |ip, and looked around the store to see if there was anything in sight that would take the taste of quinine out of his mouth. “Had too much dreamy life of ease on the farm, amj. been shaking ever since. Darn a farm, anyway.” “What,-you haven’t been to work for the deacbn' r liny fai^jlshave you? 1 thought you sent in your resignation,” and the grocery man offered the btiy some limburger cheese to Strengthen hiip “Oh, take that cheese away,” said the boy, as he turned pale and gagged. “You don’t know what a sick person needs any more than a professional nurse. What I want is to be petted. You see I went out to the farm y ith my chum, and I took the fish-poles and remained in the woods while he drove the horse to the deacon’s, and he gave the deacon my resignation, and the deacon wouldn’t accept it. He said he would hold my resignation until after harvest, and then att on it. He said hb could put me in jail for breach, of promise if I quit work and left him without giving proper notice, and my chum came and told me, and so I concluded to go to work rather than have any trouble, and the deacofi said my chum could work a few days for his board if he wanted to.„ It was pretty dare poor board for a boy to work for, but my chum wanted to be with me, so he stayed. Pa, and ma came out to the farm to stay a "day or two to help. 1-a was going to help harvest, and ma was going to help the deacon's wife, but pa wanted to carry the jug to the field, and lay under a tree while the rest of us worked, and ma just talked the arm off the deacon’s wife. The deacon and pa laid in the shade and see my chum and me work, and ma and the deacon’s wife gossiped so they forgot to get dinner, and my chum and me organized a strike, but we were beaten by monopoly. Pa took me by the neck and thrashed out a shock of wheat with my heels, and the deacon took my chum and sat down on him, and we begged and they gave us our old situations back. Blit we got even with them that night. I tell you, when a boy tries to be good, and quit playing jokes»on people, and then lias everybody down on him, and has his pa hire him out on a farm to work for a deacon that hasn’t got any soul except when he is in church,, and a boy has to get up in the night to get breakfast and go to work, and has to work until late at night, and they kick because lie wants to put butter on his pancakes, and feed him skim milk and rusty fat’ pork, it makes him tough, and he would play a joke on his aged grandmother. After my chum and me had got all the chores done that night, we sat out on a fence back of the house in the orchard, eating green apples in the moonlight and trying to think of a plan of revenge. Just then I saw a skunk back of the house, right by the outsidi- cellar door, and I told my chum that it would serve them right to drive the skunk down cellar and shut the door, but my ebum said that would be too mean. I asked him if it would be any meaner than for the deacon to snatch us bald-headed because we couldn’t mow hay away fast enough for two meji to pitch it, and he said it wouldn’t; and so we got on each side of the skunk and sort of scared it down cellar, and then we crept up softly and closed the cellar doors. Then we went into the house and I whispered to ma and asked her if she didn’t think the deacon had some cider, and ma she began to hint that she hadn’t had a good drink of cider since last winter, and the wife said us boys could take a pitcher and go down cellar and draw some. That was too much. I didn’t want any cider any way, so I told them that I belonged to a temperance society, and I should break my pledge if I dr awed cider, and she said J was a good boy, and for me never to touch a drop of cider. Then she told my chum where the eider barrel was, down <-ellar, but he ain’t no slouch. He said he was afraid to go down cellar in the dark, and so pa said he and the deacon would go down and draw the cider, and the deaf con’s wife asked.ma to go down too and look at the fruit and berries she had canned for winter, and they all went down cellar. Pa carried an old tin- lantern with holes in it to light the : deacon to the cider barrel, and the dea- | con’s wife had a taller candle to show i ma the canned fruit. I tried to get ma ] not to go, ’cause ma is a friend of mine, ;

and I didrft went her to have anything to do with the circus, but she said she guessed she knew her When anylxxly says they gness they know : their o#n birsfaeHM, that settles it with ' me. and I don’t trjr to argue with them. Well, my-chnm and me sat there in the i kitchen, and I striffed a piece of red ' table-cloth in my month to keep from I laitgiringj and my chum held his nose . with "his finger and thumb so be wouldn’t snort rfglit out. We could • hear the cider run in the pitcher, and then it stopjied and the deacon drank I out of the pitcher, and then pa did, and then they drawed some morecidßr, and ma and tire deacon's wife were talking' alsmt how ranch sugar it took to can fruit, and the deacon told pa to help himself out of a crock of fried cakes, and 1 heard the cover the crock rattle, and jast then I heard the old tin lantern' rattle on the brick floor of the cellar, the deacon said, 'Merciful goodness,’ pa said, ‘Helen damnanation, I am stabbed,’ and ma yelled, ' goodness..sake.i alive,’ and then there was n lot of dish-pans on the stairs begun to fall and they all tried to get up cellar at once, and they fell over each other, and oh, my, what a frowzy smell cafiae up to toe kitchen from the cellar. It was enough to kill anylxxly. Pa was the first to get to the head of the stairs, and he stuck his head iu the kitchen, and took a long breath and said, ‘uhoosh! Hennery, your pa is a niighty sick man.’ The deacon came up next, and he had run his head into a hanging shelf and broke a glass jar of huckleberries, and they were all over him, and he said, ‘Give me air. Earth’s but a desert drear.’ Then ma and the deacon’s wife came up on a gallop, and they looked tired. Pa began to peel off his coat and vest and said he was going out to bury them, and raa said he could bury her, too, and I asked the deacon if he didn’t notice a faint odor of sewer-gag coming from the eel lar, xnd any said it smelled more to him as though something had crawled in the cellar and died. Well, you never saw a sicker crowd, and I felt sorry for ma and the deacon, ’cause their false teeth fell out, and I knew ma couldn’t gossip and the deacon couldn’t talk sassy without teeth. But you’d a dide to see pa. He was mad, and thought the deacon had put up the job on him, and he was going to knock the deacon out in two rounds, when ma said there was no use of getting mad about a dispensation of Providence, and pa said one more such dispensation of Providence would just kill him on the spot. They finally got the house aired, and my chum and me slept on the hay in the barn, after we had opened the outside cellar door so the animal could get out, and the next morning I had the fever and ague, and pa and ma brought me home, and I have been firihg quinine down mv neck ever since. Pa says it is malaria, but it is getting up before daylight in the morning and prowling around a farin doing chores before it is time to do chores, and I don’t want any more farm. I thought at Sunday-school last Sunday, when the Superintendent talked about the odor of sanctity that pervaded the house on that beautiful'morning, and looked at the deacon, that the deacon thought the Superintendent was referring to him and pa, but may be it was an accident. Well, I must go home and shoot another charge of quinine into me,” and the boy went put as if he was on his last legs, though he acted as if he was hing to have a little fun while he did last.— PetcJds Sun. ’