“The whole family is sick, but it is not from love, like my illness, and they will get over it, while I shall fill an early grave, but not till I have made that girl and the telegraph messenger wish they were dead. Pa and I are going to Chicago next week, and I’ll bet we’ll have some fun. Pa says I need a change of air, and I think he is going to try and lose me. It’s a cold day when I get left anywhere that I can’t find my way back, Well, good bye, old rotten potatoes.”
CHAPTER XXI.
HE AND HIS PA IN CHICAGO—NOTHING LIKE TRAVELING TO GIVE TONE—LAUGHING IN THE WRONG PLACE—A DIABOLICAL PLOT—HIS PA ARRESTED AS A KIDNAPPER—THE NUMBERS ON THE DOORS CHANGED— THE WRONG ROOM—“NOTHIN THE MAZZER WITH ME, PET!”—THE TELL-TALE HAT.
“What is this I hear about your Pa’s being arrested in Chicago,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in with a can for kerosene and a jug for vinegar.
“Well, it was true, but the police let him go after they hit him a few licks and took him to the station,” said the boy, as he got the vinegar into the kerosene can, and the kerosene in the jug. “You see, Pa and me went down there to stay over night, and have fun. Ma said she druther we would be away then not when they were cleaning house, and Pa thought it would do me good to travel, and sort of get tone, and he thought maybe I’d be better, and not play jokes, but I guess it is born in me. Do you know I actually think of mean things to do when I am in the most solemn places. They took me to a funeral once; and I got to thinking what a stampede there would be if the corpse would come to life and sit up in the coffin, and I snickered right out, and Pa took me out doors and kicked my pants. I don’t think he orter kicked me for it, cause I didn’t think of it a purpose. Such things have occurred, and I have read about them, and a poor boy ought to be allowed to think, hadn’t he?”
“Yes, but what about his being arrested. Never mind the funeral,” said the grocery man, as he took his knife and picked some of the lead out of the weights on the scales.
“We went down on the cars, and Pa had a headache, because he had been out all night electioneering for the prohibition ticket, and he was cross, and scolded me, and once he pulled my ear cause I asked him if he knew the girl he was winking at in a seat across the aisle. I didn’t enjoy myself much, and some men were talking about kidnapping children, and it gave me an ijee, and just before I got to Chicago I went after a drink of water at the other end of the car, and I saw a man who looked as though he wouldn’t stand any fooling, and I whispered to him and told him that the bald-headed man I was sitting with was taking me away from my home in Milwaukee, and I mistrusted he was going to make a thief or a pickpocket of me. I said ‘s-h-h-h,’ and told him not to say anything or the man would maul me. Then I went back to the seat and asked Pa to buy me a gold watch, and he looked mad and cuffed me on the ear. The man that I whispered too got talking with some other men, and when we got off the cars at Chicago a policeman came up to Pa and took him by the neck and said, ‘Mr. Kidnapper, I guess we will run you in.’ Pa was mad and tried to jerk away, and the cop choked him, and another cop came along and helped, and the passengers crowded around and wanted to lynch Pa, and Pa wanted to know what they meant, and they asked him where he stole the kid, and he said I was his kid, and asked me if I wasn’t, and I looked scarred, as though I was afraid to say no, and I said ‘Yes sir, I guess so.’ Then the police said the poor boy was scart, and they would take us both to the station, and they made Pa walk spry, and when he held back they jerked him along. He was offul mad and said he would make somebody smart for this, and I hoped it wouldn’t be me. At the station they charged Pa with kidnapping a boy from Milwaukee, and he said it was a lie, and I was his boy, and I said of course I was, and the boss asked who told the cops Pa was a kidnapper, and they said ‘damfino,’ and then the boss told Pa he could go, but not to let it occur again, and Pa and me went away. I looked so sorry for Pa that he never tumbled to me, that I was to blame. We walked around town all day, and went to the stores, and at night Pa was offul tired, and he put me to bed in the tavern and he went out to walk around and get rested. I was not tired, and I walked all around the hotel. I thought Pa had gone to a theatre, and that made me mad, and I thought I would play a joke on him. Our room was 210 and the next was 212, and there was a old maid with a scotch terrier occupied 212. I saw her twice and she called me names, cause she thought I wanted to steal her dog. That made me mad at her, and so I took my jack knife and drew the tacks out of the tin thing that the numbers were painted on, and put the old maid’s number on our door and our number on her door, and then I went to bed. I tried to keep awake, so as to help Pa if he had any difficulty, but I guess I got asleep, but woke up when the dog barked. If the dog had not woke me up, the woman’s scream would, and if that hadn’t, Pa would. You see, Pa came home from the theatre about ’leven, and he had been drinking. He says everybody drinks when they go to Chicago, even the minister. Pa looked at the numbers on the doors all along the hall till he found 210, and walked right in and pulled off his coat and threw it on the lounge where the dog was. The old maid was asleep, but the dog barked, and Pa said, ‘That cussed boy has bought a dog.’ and he kicked the dog, and then the old maid said, ‘what is the matter pet?’”
“Pa laffed and said, ‘Nothin the mazzer with me, pet,’ and then you ought to have heard the yelling. The old maid covered her head and kicked and yelled, and the dog snarled and bit Pa on the pants, and Pa had his vest off and his suspenders unbuttoned, and he got scared and took his coat and vest and went out in the hall, and I opened our door and told Pa he was in the wrong room, and he said he guessed he knowed it, and he came in our room and I locked the door, and then the bell boy, and the porter, and the clerk came up to see what ailed the old maid, and she said a burglar got in the room, and they found Pa’s hat on the lounge, and they took it and told her to be quiet and they would find the burglar. Pa was so scared that he sweat like everything, and the bed was offul warm, and he pretended to go to sleep, but he was wondering how he could get his hat back. In the morning I told him it would be hard work to explain it to Ma how he happened to get into the wrong room, and he said it wasn’t necessary to say anything about it to Ma. Then he gave me five dollars to go out and buy him a new hat, and he said I might keep the change if I would not mention it when I got home, and I got him one for ten shillings, and we took the eight o’clock train in the morning and came home, and I spose the Chicago detectives are trying to fit Pa’s hat onto a burglar. Pa seemed offully relieved when we got across the state line into Wisconsin. But you’d a dide to see him come out of that old lady’s room with his coat and vest on his arm, and his suspenders hanging down, looking scart. He dassent lick me any more or I’ll tell Ma where Pa left his hat.”
CHAPTER XXII.
HIS PA IS DISCOURAGED. “I AIN’T NO JONER!”—THE STORY OP THE ANCIENT PROPHET—THE SUNDAY SCHOOL FOLKS GO BACK ON THE BAD BOY—CAGED CATS—A COMMITTEE MEETING—A REMARKABLE CAT-ASTROPHE!—“THAT BOY BEATS HELL!”—BASTING THE BAD BOY—THE HOT-WATER-IN-THE SPONGE TRICK.
“Say, you leave here mighty quick,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in, with his arm in a sling, and backed up againt the stove to get warm. “Everything has gone wrong since you got to coming here, and I think you are a regular Jonah. I find sand in my sugar, kerosene in the butter, the codfish is all picked off, and there is something wrong every time you come here. Now you leave.”
“I aint no Joner,” said the boy as he wiped his nose on his coat sleeve, and reached into a barrel for a snow apple. “I never swallered no whale. Say, do you believe that story about Joner being in the whale’s belly, all night? I don’t. The minister was telling about it at Sunday school last Sunday, and asked me what I thought Joner was doing while he was in there, and I told him I interpreted the story this way, that the whale was fixed up inside with upper and lower berths, like a sleeping car, and Joner had a lower berth, and the porter made up the berth as soon as Joner came in with his satchel, and Joner pulled
off his boots and gave them to the porter to black, and put his watch under the pillow and turned in. The boys in Sunday school all laffed, and the minister said I was a bigger fool than Pa was, and that was useless. If you go back on me, now, I won’t have a friend, except my chum and a dog, and I swear, by my halidom, that I never put no sand in your sugar, or kerosene in your butter. I admit the picking off of the codfish, but you can charge it to Pa, the same as you did the eggs that I pushed my chum over into last summer, though I thought you did wrong in charging Christmas prices for dog days’ eggs. When my chum’s Ma scraped his pants she said there was not an egg represented on there that was less than two years old. The Sunday school folks have all gone back on me, since I put kyan pepper on the stove, when they were singing ‘Little Drops of Water,’ and they all had to go out doors and air themselves, but I didn’t mean to let the pepper drop on the stove. I was just holding it over the stove to warm it, when my chum hit the funny bone of my elbow. Pa says I am a terror to cats. Every time Pa says anything, it gives me a new idea. I tell you Pa has got a great brain, but sometimes he don’t have it with him. When he said I was a terror to cats I thought what fun there is in cats, and me and my chum went to stealing cats right off, and before night we had eleven cats caged. We had one in a canary bird cage, three in Pa’s old hat boxes, three in Ma’s band box, four in valises, two in a trunk, and the rest in a closet up stairs.”
“That night Pa said he wanted me to stay home because the committee that is going to get up a noyster supper in the church was going to meet at our house, and they might want to send me on errands. I asked him if my chum couldn’t stay too, ’cause he is the healthiest infant to run after errands that ever was, and Pa said he could stay, but we must remember that there musn’t be no monkey business going on. I told him there shouldn’t be no monkey business, but I didn’t promise nothing about cats. Well, sir, you’d a dide. The committee was in the library by the back stairs, and me and my chum got the cat boxes all together, at the top of the stairs, and we took them all out and put them in a clothes basket, and just as the minister was speaking, and telling what a great good was done by these oyster sociables, in bringing the young people together, and taking their minds from the wickedness of the world, and turning their thoughts into different channels, one of the old torn cats in the basket gave a ‘purmeow’ that sounded like the wail of a lost soul, or a challenge to battle, I told my chum that we couldn’t hold the bread-board over the clothes basket much longer, when two or three cats began to yowl, and the minister stopped talking and Pa told Ma to open the stair door and tell the hired girl to see what was the matter up there. She thought our cat had got shut up in the storm door, and she opened the stair door to yell to the girl, and then I pushed the clothes basket, cats and all down the back stairs. Well, sir, I suppose no committee for a noyster supper, was ever more astonished. I heard ma fall over a willow rocking chair, and say, ‘scat,’ and I heard Pa say, ‘well, I’m dam’d,’ and a girl that sings in the choir say, ‘Heavens, I am stabbed,’ then my chum and me ran to the front of the house and come down the front stairs looking as innocent as could be, and we went in the library, and I was just going to tell Pa if there was any errands he wanted run my chum and me was just aching to run them, when a yellow cat without any tail was walking over the minister, and Pa was throwing a hassock at two cats that were clawing each other under the piano, and Ma was trying to get her frizzes back on her head, and the choir girl was standing on the lounge with her dress pulled up, trying to scare cats with her striped stockings, and the minister was holding his hands up, and I guess he was asking a blessing on the cats, and my chum opened the front door and all the cats went out. Pa and Ma looked at me and I said it wasn’t me, and the minister wanted to know how so much cat hair got on my coat and vest, and I said a cat met me in the hall and kicked me, and Ma cried, and Pa said that boy beats hell, and the minister said I would be all right if I had been properly brought up, and then Ma was mad, and the committee broke up. Well, to tell the honest truth Pa basted me, and yanked me around until I had to have my arm in a sling, but what’s the use of making such a fuss about a few cats. Ma said she never wanted to have my company again, cause I spoiled everything. But I got even with Pa for basting me, this morning, and I dassent go home. You see Ma has got a great big bath sponge as big as a chair cushion, and this morning I took the sponge and filled it with warm water, and took the feather cushion out of the chair Pa sits in at the table, and put the sponge in its place, and covered it over with the cushion cover, and when we all got set down to the table Pa came in and sat down on it to ask a blessing. He started in by closing his eyes and placing his hands up in front of him like a letter V, and then he began to ask that the food we were about to partake off be blessed, and then he was going on to ask that all of us be made to see the error of our ways, when he began to hitch around, and he opened one eye and looked at me, and I looked as pious as a boy can look when he knows the pancakes are getting cold, and Pa he kind of sighed and said ‘Amen’ sort of snappish, and he got up and told Ma he didn’t feel well, and she would have to take his place and pass around the sassidge and potatoes, and he looked kind of scart and went out with his hand on his pistol pocket, as though he would like to shoot, and Ma she got up and went around and sat in Pa’s chair. The sponge didn’t hold more than half a pail full of water, and I didn’t want to play no joke on Ma, cause the cats nearly broke her up, but she sat down and was just going to help me, when she rung the bell and called the hired girl, and said she felt as though her neuralgia was coming on, and she would go to her room, and told the girl to sit down and help Hennery. The girl sat down and poured me out some coffee, and then she said. ‘Howly Saint Patrick, but I b’lave those pancakes are burning,’ and she went out in the kitchen. I drank my coffee, and then took the big sponge out of the chair and put the cushion in the place of it, and then I put the sponge in the bath room, and I went up to Pa and Ma’s room, and asked them if I should go after the doctor, and Pa had changed his clothes and got on his Sunday pants, and he said, ‘never mind the doctor, I guess we will pull through,’ and for me to get out and go to the devil, and I came over here. Say, there is no harm in a little warm water, is there? Well, I’d like to know what Pa and Ma and the hired girl thought. I am the only real healthy one there is in our family.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
HE BECOMES A DRUGGIST—“I HAVE GONE INTO BUSINESS!”—A NEW ROSE GERANIUM PERFUME—THE BAD BOY IN A DRUGGIST’S STORE— PRACTICING ON HIS PA—AN EXPLOSION—THE SEIDLETZ POWDER—HIS PA’S FREQUENT PAINS—POUNDING INDIA-RUBBER—CURING A WART.
“Whew! What is that smells so about this store? It seems as though everything had turned frowy,” said the grocery man to his clerk, in the presence of the bad boy, who was standing with his back to the stove, his coat tails parted with his hands, and a cigarette in his mouth.
“May be it is me that smells frowy,” said the boy as he put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, and spit at the keyhole in the door. “I have gone into business.”
“By thunder, I believe it is you,” said the grocery man, as he went up to the boy, snuffed a couple of times, and then held his hand to his nose. “The board of health will kerosene you, if they ever smell that smell, and send you to the glue factory. What business you gone into to make you smell so rank?”
“Well, you see Pa began to think it was time I learned a trade, or a perfession, and he saw a sign in a drug store window, ‘boy wanted,’ and as he had a boy he didn’t want, he went to the druggist and got a job for me. This smell on me will go off in a few weeks. You know I wanted to try all the perfumery in the store, and after I had got about forty different extracts on my clothes, another boy that worked there he fixed up a bottle of benzine and assafety and brimstone, and a whole lot of other horrid stuff, and labeled it ‘rose geranium,’ and I guess I just wallered in it. It is awful, aint it? It kerflummixed Ma when I went into the dining-room the first night that I got home from the s
tore, and broke Pa all up, He said I reminded him of the time that they had a litter of skunks under the barn. The air seemed fixed around where I am, and everybody seems to know who fixed it. A girl came in the store yesterday to buy a satchet, and there wasn’t anybody there but me, and I didn’t know what it was, and I took down everything in the store pretty near, before I found it, and then I wouldn’t have found it only the proprietor came in. The girl asked the proprietor if there wasn’t a good deal of sewer-gas in the store, and he told me to go out and shake myself. I think the girl was mad at me because I got a nursing bottle out of the show case, with a rubber muzzle, and asked her if that was what she wanted. Well, she told me a satchet was something for the stummick, and I thought a nursing bottle was the nearest thing to it.”
“I should think you would drive all the customers away from the store,” said the grocery man, as he opened the door to let the fresh air in.
“I don’t know but I will, but I am hired for a month on trial, and I shall stay. You see, I shan’t practice on anybody but Pa for a spell. I made up my mind to that when I gave a woman some salts instead of powdered borax, and she came back mad. Pa seems to want to encourage me, and is willing to take anything that I ask him to, He had a sore throat and wanted something for it, and the boss drugger told me to put some tannin and chlorate of potash in a mortar, and grind it, and I let Pa pound it with the mortar, and while he was pounding I dropped in a couple of drops of sulphuric acid, and it exploded and blowed Pa’s hat clear across the store, and Pa was whiter than a sheet. He said he guessed his throat was all right, and he wouldn’t come near me again that day. The next day Pa came in and I was laying for him. I took a white seidletz powder and a blue one, and dissolved them in separate glasses, and when Pa came in I asked him if he didn’t want some lemonade, and he said he did, and I gave him the sour one and he drank it. He said it was too sour, and then I gave him the other glass, that looked like water, to take the taste out of his mouth, and he drank it. Well, sir, when those two powders got together in Pa’s stummick, and began to siz and steam, and foam, Pa pretty near choked to death, and the suds came out of his nostrils, and his eyes stuck out, and as soon as he could get his breath he yelled ‘fire,’ and said he was poisoned, and called for a doctor, but I thought as long as we had a doctor right in the family there was no use of hiring one, so I got a stomach pump, and I would have had him baled out in no time, only the proprietor came in and told me to go and wash some bottles, and he gave Pa a drink of brandy, and Pa said he felt better.”
The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack Page 8
