Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1884 — THE. BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE. BAD BOY.

“Say, what is this I hear about yotn pa and the new minister quarreling, and your pa ordering him out of the door, and hie refusing to go; and hitting your pa in the ear?" said the groceryman to the bad boy, as he showed up at his usual hour. ; rrnrr T^y — “Well, it tfas partly true, but it was all a joke,” said the’ bad boy, as he looked out the door to see if his parent was in the vicinity. “You see, it was a new minister that came here to exchange works with our preaqhsr. You know when they exchange works it is as good as a vacation, ’cause both ministers can preach an old sermon that has been laying’around and got moth-eaten. The next day after the visiting preacher preached he came to our house to stay a day or two, at ma’s invitation. Pa hasn’t been feeling very well lately, and ma said he wanted some excitement, and I thought of an old story I read once, about some students at a theological seminary making two professors believe that each other was deaf, aud how they talked loud to each other; and I thought if such a joke was all right in a college where they turned out young preachers, it would do at our house; so I told ma she better tell pa to talk loud enough, or the preacher couldn’t hear him. You see I didn’t lie; but ma went and told pa the minister was deaf as a post and he would have to yell bloody gnnrder to make him hear. X don’t think it was right ior ma to say that, ’cause I didn’t tell her the minister was deaf; but pa sa'd he hadn’t spoken at ward caucuses for nothing, and he would make the preacher hear or talk the top of his head off. I brought the minister’s satchel over from the house where he had been stopping, and he came along with me, and I asked him how his voice was, and he said it was all right, and I told him he would have use for it if he talked with pa much. He asked me if pa was deaf, but I ‘wouldn’t lie, and all I said was if the minister would veil as loud as he did when he got excited in preaching, pa would hear the most of what he said. O, he said he guessed he, wouldn’t have any trouble making pa hear. Well, I ushered him in the parlor, and they shook hands and I skipped up stairs, just As pa swelled out his chest and took a long breath and shouted, ‘Glad to see you!’ Well, you’d a dide. It seemed as though his voice would knock the new minister’s ear. off, but the minister braced himself, inflated his lungs, and shouted, ‘The happiness is mutual, I assnre yon,’ and then they both coughed, ’cause I guess it strained their lungs some. Ma was leaning over the banister, and when pa would roar at the minister, ma would laugh, and when the minister would roar back at pa, I would laugh. Pa seemed to think the minister talked loud, cause all deaf people talk loud, and the minister thought the same, and they was a having it pretty loud, you bet. They talked about relidgin, and politics, and every thing, and pa mopped his bald head with his handkerchief, and the minister got red in the face; and finally pa told the minister he needn't yell loud enough to loosen the shingles, as he wasn’t deaf, and the minis ter,:, said he wasn’t deaf, and pa needn’t yell like a maniac, and then pa: said he was another, and the minister said pa was a worldly minded son of Belial, and then ma she see it was time to stop it, and she went down stairs otf a hop, skip, and jump, and told them both that there was a mistake, and that nobody was deaf, and then the minister said he understood from pa’s little boy that his pa was hard of hearing, and pa sent for me, but I was scarce. Don’t you think a boy shows good sense, sometimes, in not being very plenty around when they yearn for him? Sometimes I am numerous, and then again lam about as few as any of the boys. Well, there was no harm done, but pa and the minister have their opinion of each other. Say, what do you think of the nominations?” and the boy began to husk some strawberries in a box.

“Oh, I don’t know anything about it. What I am thinking of is, where you will fetch up,” and the grocery man looked hard. “Here you have played a mean joke on a truly good preacher, and your own father, and I am ashamed of you. Bnt, by the way, what has become of the colored family you adopted, the sick boy and his sick mother ? Yon haven’t gone back on them and let them starve, have you?” “Starve nothin’,” said the bad boy. *'Our doctor attended to them until they were both well, and didn’t charge a cent, and ma and I went around aad collected money enough from the neighbors to set the old colored lady up in a laundry, with regular washing machines, and wringers and everything, and she hires three women to help her, and the colored boy is the cashier, and collects the clothes and delivers them in a nice little hand-cart that I borrowed from a printing office for them, and they are making money hand over fist, doing washing for about forty families. But the meanest thing was they wanted to pay me for my kindness to them. Gosh, it hurts me for anybody to want to pay me for helping ’em out of a serape. I get enough fun just thinking about it, and when anybody calls me bad I just whistle ‘Wajt Tifi the Clouds 801 l Bv,’ and think of the different ones I have made happy, and who think I am all right, and don’t pay no attention to the mean things people say about me. Sh-sh! Here comes the colored woman with new clothes on, looking healthy as anybody, and I must get ont the back door or she will wan: to ling me. Darned if I want to be hugged by everybody, ’specially colored wimmin,” and the boy went ont the back door and wandered off down the alley, as contented with himself as though he had never done a wrong thing in all his life.— Peck’s Sun. A strange flower, that white it the morning and red at night, has been named the “Confederate Bose,” on account of its blending these two beautiful colors. 'The plant is odorless. If grows in great bunches, and is su» eeptible of a high degree of cultivation “Bear a Hiy in thv band: Gates of brans cannot withstand One touch of that .magic wand.” —Longfellow. *