Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 November 1883 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

“Yon seem sort of broke up this morning, ” said the grocery man to the . bad boy, as he came in and stood against the counter, under<the kerosene lamp that was leaking on his hat. “And I knew you would be when I saw you going down the dark alley last night with that ragged girl that peddles i apples. Oh, you are a sly one, and I have watched*you, and I am satisfied you are on the wrong road. Yon better let up, young man, or your people will be ashamed of you. When a boy that belongs to the better class of society goes down a dark alley with a low girl—.” “But, gol-darn it, she lived in the alley. If she hadn’t lived in the alley I wouldn’t have gone in there,” said the boy, a little nettled at the Remarks of the grocery man, and trying to explain. “Yes, that is *all right,” said the cheese fiend, winking at the carpenter, who was nailing a weather-strip on the door, and who looked as though he needed a weather-strip on the bottom of his pants, to bank up his low shoes. “Of course she lived there, and she inveigled you, a respectable boy, into her den, and you didn’t have to have your coat-collar pulled off to get you to go. I am ashamed of you, to go off down a dark alley with a disreputable girl —” “There, hold on, condemn you,” said the boy, as he grated his teeth and picked up a stick of stove wood and drew it on the grocery man, his face pale as a ghost, while the carpenter stopped work to look on. “You say a word against that poor girl, and down comes your grocery. She is a Christian, that girl is, though she don’t put on airs and go to church with silk dresses and rich duds. But she prays, by jingo, better than any of ’em. There aint none of these prayer sharps that get up and talk big words, that can make me cry, but that little girl made me cry last night as though I had broke a pair of skates. You see her father is a drunkard, and he takas half she makes peddling apples, to buy gin, and her grandmother has got the consumption, and that takes the other half to support her. I knew that girl when I went to school, and yesterday she came to me crying, and said she was going to ask a favor of me ’cause I had a heart in me. I don’t know how she found it out, but anyway she said she had knowed it for years. It seems her drunken father had taken all her money, and had gone on an awful bum, and she didn’t haven’t any to buy some of those cough-sirup lozenges for her grandma, and the old lady was chokin up pretty rough, and she wanted me to lend her a dollar till she could realize on the apples she was going to get trusted for. Probably you noticed I haven’t got any watch this morning’ I have got my chain, with a bunch of keys on it in my pocket, but nobody will know I haven’t got any watch unless they ask me what time it is, and then I will tell them it has run down, and I guess it has, ’cause pawnbrokers never wind up watches. Well, sir, I got $4 on my watch, and I went and bought apples for her and’medicine for her grandma, and then I went down home with her. You are right about the allev being pretty rough, but when I went in the little roon, where the old lady was on a bed, and heard her let off one of those regular hark-from-the-tombs coughs, that sounded away down cellar, where it is damp and moldy, I tell you it made me feel serious. And when that ragged little girl got down on her knees and prayed, there in the dirt, and asked God to bless the friend that had risen up and lifted such a load off the sufferer, do you know, I felt as though I had swallowed a piece of turnip or something hard/ and couldn’t get it up or down, and the tears come to my eyes just like when you peel onions. ■ She didn’t use any of this highfalutin language, such as the highsalaried preachers use, where you want a dictionary in your pew to find what the words mean. It was no full-dress, formal prayer, like some of the ministers give us, when it seems as though they had just been given a letter of introduction to God, and wanted to show Him that He was in luck to get acquainted with so distinguished and educated a preacher. She didn’t go on and advise God how to run things, like some of the preachers I have heard, and act as though if God didn’t take thei r ad vice He would lose his situation and be mighty lucky if he got a job carrying around a collection plate. It wasn’t that kind of a prayer. The little girl got right down on her knees, and said, ‘Oh, Father in Heaven,’just as though God was sitting right there in front of her on a three-leggea stool, and she seemed so confident that the Heavenly Father heard her that I could almost see His band on her head, petting the poor child. She didn’t tell God anything about my pawning my watch aiid buying the apples, and she didn't mention my name at all, but I could imagine that even He who watches the-sparrows fall, was onto the bujieh of keys in my vest-pocket, hitched to the watch-chain, bigger than a house. Say, do you know, some of these long prayers by the dress-parade preachers, who get a salary big enough to own a yacht, make me tired, and I want to go , put in the woods and hear even a flock of praises, in preference to listening tO'-a-Inng recital of what a lot of miserable sinnerS" 11 #!! tjie people are who are being prayed for; but I could have listened to that dirty, ragged girl pray for an hour, she was so natural and pitiful, and talked so God could understand it whether Ho had ever graduated at college or not. But she wasn’t talking against time for wages, and she just seemed to have a ittle conversation with the good Lord just as a child would with its father, and then she got up and fired some medicine down her grandma, and made her a cup of tea on an oil stove and , toasted a piece of bread and poached, an egg while I sat there thinking. Do you know she broke me. all up. If it wasn’t for that old calico dress, and the shoes run over at the heel, and the moth-eaten stockings. I should have thought she was an angel, and, by guni, 7 1 will pawn everything I have got for her to get things for her grandma, Vut someliody 'else has got to chip in to buy gin for the old man. I can’t run a hospital and a distillery both on one cheap

watch, but I am going to work for the humane society next week, and that girl can have all the money I make as long as the old lady’s cough hangs on. Say, do you think there is any bathroofn in heaven where they can take such a dirty girl as that and;, make an angel of her that I Will pass in a crowd ? Take . the dirt out from under her finger ; nails, and soak her hands in hot water, ; and put cold cream on them, and let her sleep a few nights with rubber gloves on, and I suppose they could make her pass as an angel. Well, I have got to go down to the Humane society i office. I was in a street-car the other night and the’car was full, and got off -the track, and the mules couldn’t pull it. All the men sat there and wouldn't get out. They read papers, and acted mad, while the driver pounded the mules. I was on the back step, and I yelled, ‘The members of the Humane society are requested to get Out of the car and help push.’ You ought to have seen ’em, . They all looked at each other, and then got out, and some of them looked ashamed, but they helped the mules. The bo.-s of the Humane society heard of it, and he said he would give me a job watching for butchers who maul cattle. I guess I can work my way up so I will finally hold the proud position of looking .after lame horses that draw swill wagons. Well, I must go and send our doctor down the alley, to sound the old lady’s cough, and have him charge it to pa.” As the boy went out the grocery man told the carpenter that boy had a heart in him as big as a. barrel, but you had to watch the raisin box, all the same, when he was around.—Peel’s Sun.