Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 April 1884 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

“Your pa got over being seared out of his boots?” said tho grocery man to ; the Bad boy F as he took up a handful - of hicko ymuts and begat Cracking them between a couple of five-pound freights on'the counter. “ What do yon meanf* Who told you pa had been scared?” asked the boy, as he put his thumb in his mouth, after knocking the nail off with a weight. ; '“I didn’t know as anybpdv knew any- I thing about it but me and the girl. ” “O, a brakeman that runs on the ■ Chicago train ' was here tliis morning, ] and he told me your pa came up on the ’ train last night, and along there about j Kenosha ho went through the train as 1 though he had been kicked, and got ; into the postal car aud crawled under a j lot of mail sacks, and rode all the way j to Milwaukee, sweating liko a butcher, ! and as pale as a ghost. What was it • all about? You haven't been playing, another trick on him, have you?” and j the grocery man picked up the hickbry- I nuts the lx»y had left and threw them in the basket, while the boy wrapped a handkerchief around his thumb and looked’ mad. “No, I didn’t play anything on him, but I saved his life. He is an old smarty, and got himself into a scrape. You sec, pa and me went down to Chicago on a pass pa got somehow in politics. We took in the Battle of Gettysburg, where a follow can see all about the war without getting shot in the back. We came back on the 5 o’clock train, and of course pa couldn’t sit with me, but had to go and sit down in the seat with a girl that was alone. Pa hasn’t got any more sense than a cow about such things. A girl don’t -want -an -eld—duffer - her, -What she wants is a young feller, that Jm ß g°t beat’s oil -on In a h airy and smells’ sort of drug-store like. But pa thinks he is just as entertaining as when he wasyoufig, and if he weiitmto a car where all the seats but one was vacant, and that one had a girl in it, he would go up to her in his insinuating way, and take off his plug hat and show his bald head and say, "Miss, is this seat engaged?” and befdra she had time to say anything he would sit down with her and begin talking about something she didn’t care any more about than she would about the process of embalming Egyptian mummies. Well, pa sat down by a girl who was knitting, and he began to talk sweet. He said he was a traveling man, getting $6,000 a year and a share df the profits. He found fault with the railroads, the cars, the hotels, and everything, and to hear liim talk you would think he was reared in a palace, always trayeled on special cars, and was worth $11,000,000. I sat behind him. and heard what he said, and it; was all I could do to keej> from asking him if he thought ma would be expecting us home to-night, but T have harT experience enough with pa to know that when he is engaged in business that .cause® his brain to expand and throb, that the safest, way is to keep still. He told the girl she was purty, and asked her all about herself, and if she was going far, and he put his arm on the back of the seat, and acted as though he was going to hug her, but he didn’t, cause just as His arm began to get real near £othe girl’s small of her back, I imitated the brakeman and shouted, ‘Lake Forest,’ and pa thought the brakeman was right behind him, and he drawed his arm away so quick he hit the funny bone of his elbow on the back of the seat, and it hurt him like everything. The girl laffed, and pa blushed, and in a little while he had his arm there again. The conductor and the brakeman watched pa, and just as he got close to the girl, and was whispering to her, the conductor touched him on his shoulder and asked him ■what the number of his pass was. Pa had to take his arm away to get his pass, and then he put it back again, and was commencing where he left off, to give the girl some taffy, when the . brakeman touched pa on the shoulder, and asked him if it was his dog in the baggage car, chewing the hinges off the trunks. Pa said he didn’t liave no dog, and the,brakeman went away. The girl was real disgusted with pa, and I could see she wanted to have a rest. Just before the train got to Waukegan the girl said she want6d to semi a dispatch to Racine, and pa gave her some paper and she wrote a message and asked pa to send it for her. Pa didn’t want to leave his seat,- ee die 5.9 id <to .me, Hem, little boy, you get off at Waukegan and send this message for the beautifhly’Otnig tadyß-and he gave me the dispatch and a dollar. I went out at Wakegan, and read the message and didn’t send it. It read like this, ‘Father, come down to the depot with a horsewhip. There is an old drunkard on the train who has made liimself vdry obnoxious to me, gnd I want you to maul him within an inch of Ins life.’ Well I wouldn’t contribute to pa’s being mauled, so l kept it, and after the train left Waukegan I called pa into the other end of the ear and told him I didn’t think it was best to send that dispatch, so I kept it. He was mad in a minute and told me I had no right to think anything. When I was told to do a thing it was my business to do it, and ask no questions. He said he was ashamed,of me, and told me when the train got to Kenosha to go right out and send it quick. He was going to start back to talk with the girl some more when I handed him the dispatch, and told him to read it, and then if he wanted me to, send it I would. He read it, and his face got as white as chalk, and the few hairs on his head raised right up so they were stiff enough to tack down a carpet with, and big drops of perspiration stood out all over his face, and his collar just wilted right down, and he was not half as tall as before. ‘Don’t say anything about this,’ he said in a whisper. ‘I know the clerk m the mail car, and he has often wanted me to ride with him, and I guess E will go in there. There is not air enough in this car.’ Pa went forward about ts sudden ns you often see an old man go while a train is in motion, and I went and sat down behind tho girl. I said to her,‘ ‘The old party who sat with you hak,gone out to ride on the cow-catcher to get cooled off.’ She said she wished he would fall off and get left. .1 asked her if the old man was hey pa, and she said he was an old fool,

and I agreed with her and we had quite a nice v.sit. I think If old people would keep out of the way, and not bo so fresh, young pqdple could have more fun. I sat-down in the seat with her, and got real well acquainted, and when she got off at Racine, I helped her off, and I could huagme pa in the postal ear just ”as'wealing." Well, pa : didn’i~afibw up till wo got to Milwaukee, and then he came out of the side door of the postal car all mussed ujt, and smelling niildewed like old sacks. He asked me if I noticed any unusual commotion at Racine, and 1 told him there was nothing special, only there I was an old prizefighter on tiie depot steps with a blacksnake Whip, and lota of people seeming to expect a row, and I guess tho girl sent another dispatch. Pa shivered and said, ‘Let this be warning to you, my boy, not to ever allow any female : ktfhngefs = tmget" acquaiptelT xHfii yttu, and become familiar.’ I told pa I didn’t ‘ sec any haim .in it, ’.cause I rode all the way with that girl, after he left, and she seemed to like it, and never once thought of having me horse-whipped; Pa is getting calm again, but it will be a Idng time before his hair lays down smooth again, the way it did before he got scared.” “Well, your pa is a la-la,” said the grocery man, “and ought to be kept locked up as a monk in a monkery, somewhere. ” The bad boy agreed that a monkery was prescription his pa needed, and he went out and caught on behind a cutter and was tipped off in the slush, and went home to run himself through a clothes wringer.— Peck’s Sun.