THE BAD BOY AGAIN.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3691, 14 May 1883, Page 4

THE BAD BOY AGAIN.

HE "DYJfAMITKS" HIS lA

_" I guess your pa's losses in the silver mine has made him crazy, haven't they," said the grocery nnni to the bad boy, us ho cm ma in the store with his eye winkers Hinged olf and powder marks on his face, and began to play on the harmonica, as ho sat down on the end of a stick oi" stovewood and balanced himself.

" 0, 1 guess not. He has hedged. J fe got in with a deacon of another church, and sold somo of his stock to him, and pa says if I will keep my condemn mouth shut ho will unload the whole of it, if the churches hold out. Ho goes to a, new church every night there is a prayer meeting or anything, and makes ma go with him to give: him tone, and after meeting eho talks with the sisters about how to piece a silk bed quilt, while pa gets in his Avork .selling silver stock. I don't know but ho will order some more stock from the factory if he Hells all he has got," and the boy went on playing "There's a land that is fairer than Day-" " But what was lie &kipi>ing U P street

for, the other night, with Iris hat off, grabbing at lih coat tails as though they were on tiro \ I thought I never saw any pussy man run any faster. And what was the celebration down on your street about that time ? I thought the world was coming to an end," and the grocery man kept away from the boy, for fear he would explode.

"0, that was only a Fenian seam Nothin' serious. You .see, pa is a. .sort of half Englishman. Ho claims to be an. American citizen when he Avauts oflicc, but when they talk about a draft he claims to be a subject of Great Britain, and ho says they can't'toueh him. Pa i« a darn smart man, and don't you forget it. There don't any of them get ahead'of pa, much. Well, pa has said a good deal about the wicked Fenians, and"that they ought to be pulled, and all that, and when I read the story in the papers about the explosion in the British Parliament, pa was hot. He said the damn Irish Avcrc ruining the whole world. He didn't dare say it at the table, or our hired girl would have knocked him silly with a spoonful of mashed potatoes, 'cause she is an Irish girl, and she can lick any Englishman in this town. Pa said there ought to have been some body there to have taken that bomb up and throw it in the sewer before it exploded. He said if he ever should .see a bomb ho would grab it right up and throw it a way where it wouldn't hurt anybody. 7'a has me read the papers to him niu'his, "cause his eyes have got .splinters in 'cm, and after I had read all there Avas in the 'paper I made up a lot more and pretended to read it, about how it was rumored that the Fenians here in Milwaukee were going k> place dynamite bombs at every house where an Englishman lived, and at a given signal blow them all up Pa looked pale around the gills, but he said he wasn't scared. Pa and ma were going to call on a she deacon that night, that has lots of money in the bank, to see if she didn't want to invest iv a dead sure paying silver mine, and me and my chum concluded to give them a .send off. We got my big black injy rubber football, and painted " .IJui;/iiuf//t(" in big white letters on it, and tied a piece of tarred rope to it for a fuse, and got a big lire cracker, one of these old fourth of July horse scarors, and a basket full of broken "■lass. We put the football in front of the step and lit the tarred rope, and got under the step Avith the fire crackers and basket, where they go doAvn into the basement. Pa and ma came out the front door, and down the steps, and pa saw the football and the burning fuse, and he said: ' Great God, llanncr, Aye are blown up,' and he started to run, and ma she stopped to look at it. Just as pa started to run I touched off the fire cracker, and my chum arranged it to pour out the broken glass on the brick pavement just as the fire cracker Avcut off. Well, everything Aveut just as we expected it, except ma. She hud examined the football, and concluded that it Avas not dangerous, and Avas just giving it a kick as the fire cracker Avent off, and the glass fell, and the fh-e ei-aeker was so near liei , that it scared her, and when pa looked around ma was flying across the sidewalk, and pa heard the noise and he thought the house was blown to atoms. 0, you'd a died to see him go around the corner. You could play crokay on his coat-tail, and his face Avas as pale as ma's when she goes to a party. But ma didn't scare much. As quick as she stopped against the latching post she knew it was us boys, and she came down there, and maybe she didn't maul me. I cried and tried to gain her sympathy by telling her the iire cracker went olf before it was due, and burned my eyebrows.off, but she didn't let up until I promised to go and find pa. I tell yon, my ma ought to be engaged by the British Government to hunt out the dynamite liouds. She Avould corral them in two minutes. If pa had as much sand as ma lias got, it Avould be Avarm weather for me. Well, me and my chum Avent and headed pa off, or I guess ho Avould bo running yet. We got him up by the lake shore, and lie Avanted to know if the house fell down. He said he would leave it to me if he ever said anything against the Fenians, and I told him he had always claimed that the Fenians were the nicest men in the Avorld, and it seemed to relieve him A'cry much. When ho got homo and found the house there he was tickled, and Avhen ma called him an old bald-headed coward, and said it. Avas only a joke of the boysAvith a foot-ball, ho laughed right out, and said he knew it all the time, and he ran to see i£ ma woidd be scared. And then ho Avanted to hug me, but it Avasn't my night to hug, and I Aveut down to the theatre. Pa don't amount to much Avhcn there is trouble. The time ma had them cramps, you remember, Avhcn you got your cucumbers first last season, pa came near fainting away, and ma said ever since they had been married when anything hailed her, pa has had pains just the same as she has, only he grunted more and thought ho was going to die. Gosh! if I Aviis a, man L woudn't bo sick every time one of the neighbors had aback ache, would you r , " "Well, you can't tell. When you have been married twenty or thirty years you will know a good deal more than you do now. You think you know it all, now, and you arc pretty intelligent for a boy that has been brought up carelessly, but there are things that you Avill learn after a while that Avill astonish you. Jsut Avhat ails your pa's teeth ? The hired girl was over here to get some corn meal for gruel, and she said your pa Avas gumming it, since he lost his teeth."

"O, about the teeth. That was too bad. You see, my chum has got a dog that is old, and his teeth have all come out in front, and this morning I borricd pa's teeth before he got up, to see if avo couldn't fix them in the dog's mouth, so he could eat better. Pa says it is an evidence of a kind heart for a boy to be good to dumb animals, but it's a darn mean dog tint -will go back on a friend. We tied the teeth iv the dog's mouth Avith a string - that Aveut around his upper jaw, and another around his under jaw, and you'd v died to see how funny he looked Avhen he la/fed. Ho looked just like pa Avhen ho tries to smile, so as to get mo to come up to him so lie can lick me. The dog pawed his mouth a spell to get the teeth out, and then avo gave him a bone Avith somo meat on, and he began to guaAV the bone, and the teetli came oil' the plate, and he thought it was pieces of the bone, and ho swallowed the teeth. My chum noticed it first, and he said avo had got to get in our Avork pretty quick to save the plates, and I think wo Avere iv luck to save them. I held the dog, and my chum, avlio Avas better acquainted witli him, untied the strings and got the gold plates out, but there were only two tcelh left, and the dog was happy. He Avaggled his tail for more teeth, but we hadn't anymore. lam going to gi\"c him ma's teeth some day.

My chum says that when a clog gets an appetite for anything you have got to keep giving it to him, or ho goes back on you. But I think my chum jilaycd dirt on me. We sold the gold plates to a jewelry man, and my chum kept the money. I think, as long as I furnished the goods, he ought to have giA'cn me something besides the experience, don't you? After this I don't have no more partners, you bet." All this time the boy Avas marking on a piece of paper, and soon, after ho Avent out the grocery man noticed a crowd outside, and on going out ho found a sign hanging , up, Avhich read: " Wormy FujaJ'uv l'iniu:s." —- Pock's Sun.