THE BAD BOY.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3745, 17 July 1883, Page 4

THE BAD BOY.

He Help 3 His Pα to Move. " Sen here, you coon, you get out of here," said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the storo with his face black and shining, "I don't want any colored bors around here. White boys break me up bad enough." •• v, pimuytjiie," said the bad boy, as he put his hands on his knees and lauylnd so the candy jars rattled on tho shelves. "You didn't know me. I am the same boy that comes in here and talks your arm oil," and the boy opened the cheese box and cut oft' a piece of cheese so natural that the grocery man had no difliculty in recognising him. '• Whut in the name of the seven sleepingBisters have you got on your hands and face," said the grocery man, as he took the boy by the ear and turned him around. " You would pass in a colored prayer meeting, and no one would think you were galvanised. "What are you got up in such an outlandish rig for?" " Well, I'll tell you, if you will keep watch at the door. If you kco a baldheaded colored man coming along , tho street with a club, you whistle, and I will fall down cellar. The bald-headed c ,lored man will bo pa. You sec, we moved yesterday. Pa told me to get a vacation from the livery stable, and wo would have fun moving. But I don't want any more fun. I know when I have got enough fun. Pa carried all the light things, and when it come to lifting, he had a crick in tho back. Gosh, I never was so fired as I was last night, and I hope we have got settled, only fioine of the goods havent'fc turned up yet. A drayman toolc one load over on the west Bide, and delivered them to a house that Bcemed to bo expecting a load of household furniture. He thought it was all right, if everybody that was moving got a load of goods. Well, after wo got movod pa said we must mako garden, and he said wo •would go out and spade up the and ■sow peas, and radishes, and beets. There ■was some neighbors lived in the next house to our new one, that was all wimmen, and pa didn't like to have them think he had to work, so ho said it would bo a good joku to disguise onrselve.4 as tramps, and tho neighbors would think we had hired some tramps to dig in tho garden. I told pu of a bo:is scheme to fool them. I suggested that we take smnc of this shoe blacking that is put on with a sponge, and black our faces, and the neighbors would think wo had hired an old colored man and his boy to work in the garden. Pa said it was immense, and he told mo to go and black up, and if it worked he would black hisseif. So I went and put this burnt cork on my face, 'cause it would ■wash otf, and pu looked at me and said it was a whack, and for mo to fix him up too. So I got tho bottle of shoo blacking and painted pa so ho looked like a colored coal heaver. Actually, when ma saw him sho ordered him off the promises, and when ho he hilled at her and acted sassy, sho was going to throw biling water on pa, but I told her the scheme, and she let up on pn. 0, you'd a dido to hoc us out in the garden. Pa looked like Uncle Tom, and I looked like Topsy, only 1 ain't that kind of a colored person, Wo worked till a boy thro wed some tomato cans over the alley fence and hit me, and I piled over the fence after him, nnd left pa. It was my chum, and when I had caught him we put up a job to get pa to chase us. We thro wed some more cans, and pa came out and my chum started and 1 after him, and pa after both of us He chased us two blocks and then we got behind a policeman, and my chum told the policeman it was crazy old colored man that wanted to kidnap us, and the policeman took pa by the neck and was going to club him, but pa said he would go homo and behave. Ho was offul mud, and he went home and we looked through the alley fence and saw pa trying to wash olf the blacking. You see that blacking won't wash otf. You have to wear it oil. Pa would wash his face with soap suds, and then look in tho glass, and he wn.s blacker ovorv time lin wn.-ihod, and when ma hifftid lit him he said the oflulcst words, something like ' sweet spirit huir my pj-inur, ' ihen he washed nimsulf again. 1 am going to leave my burnt cork on, cause if L washed it oil'pa would know there had been some Miiougiug Homo where. 1 asked the .store man how long it would take the blacking to wear utf, and ho said it ought to wear oil' in a week. I guess pa won't go out doors much, unless it is in tho night; I inn going to get him to let mo go of! in the country fishing, till mine wears olf, and when I get out of town I will wash up. Say, you don't think a little blacking hurts a man's complexion do you, and you don't think a man ought to get mad because it won't wash off, do you?' .

"0, probably it don't hurt the complexion," said the grocery man, as ho Hprinklcd sonic fresh water on the wilted lettuce, so it would look fresh while the lured girl was buying - .some, "and yet it is mighty unpleasant, where a man has got tin engagement to go to a card party, as I know your pu lias to-night. As to getting mad about it, if I was your pa I would take a barrel stave and shatte your castle scandalous. What kind of a fate do you think awaits you when you die, anyway 'r" " Well, I uin mixed on the fate that awaits mo when I die. If I should go off sudden, with all my sins on my head, and this burnt cork on my face, I should probably bo a neighbor to you, way down below, and they would givo mo n job as fireman, and I should feel bad for you every time I chucked in anuther chunk of brimstone, and thought of you trying to swim dog fashion in the lako of fire, and straining your eyes to find an iceberg that you could crawl up on to cool your parched hind legs. if I die slow, I will have time to report and be saved, before I shall bo toasted brown. That's what the minister says, and they wouldn't pay him two thousand dollars a year and givo him a vacation to tell anything that was not so. I tell you it is painful to think of that place that so many pretty fair average peoplo hero are going to when they die. Just think of it, a man that swears just once, if he don't hedge, and take it back, will go to the bad place. If a person steals a pin, just a small, no account pin, ho is (is bad as if he stole all there was in a bunk, and he stands a chance of going to the bad place. You see, if a fellow steals a little thing like a pin, ho forgets to repent, cause it don't seem to be worth while to make so much fuss about. But if a fellow robs a bank, or steals a whole lot of money for that matter, and he gets in his work repenting, too quick, and he is liable to get to the μ-ood place, while you, who have only stolo a few potatoes out of a bushel that yon sola to the orphan asylum, will forget to repent, unci y OU w ju fizzle. I tell you the more I read about being good, and going to Heaven, the more I think a feller can't be too careful, and From this out you won't find a better boy him I am. When I corao in hero after bis and tako a few dried punches or crackers and cheese, you charge it right tip to pa, and then I won't have it ou my mind and hare to answer for it at the great judgment day. lam going to fibake my chum, causo he chews tobacco, which is wicked, though J don't bee hw that etui bo, when the j

minister smokes, but I want to be on the safe side. I am going to be good or bust a suspender, and hereafter you can point to me as a boy who has seen the folly on an ill-spent life, and if there is such a thing aa a fifteen year old boy, who has been a terror, getting to heaven, I am the hairpin, I tell you. When I listen to tho minister tell about the angels flying , around there, and I see the pictures of them purtier than any girl in this town, with chubby arms with dimples in the elbows and shoulder, and long golden hair, and think of myself hero cleaning off horses in a livery stable and smelling like an old harness, it makes me tired. I wouldn't miss going there for ten dollars. Say, you would make a healthy angel for a back street of the new Jerusalem, but you would give the whole crowd away uuless you washed up, and sent that shirt to the Chinese laundry. Yes, sir, hereafter you will find me as good as I know how to be. Now I am going to wash up and go and help the minister move."

As the boy went out the grocery man sat for several minutes thinking of the change that had come over the bad boy, and wondered what had brought it about, and then he went to the d"or to watch him as he wended his way across the street with his head down as though in deep thought, and the grocery man said to himself, ' that boy is not as bad an some people think he is,' and then he looked around and saw a sign up in the front of the store, written on a piece of box cover, with blue pencil, 'Spoiled canned ham and tongue, good enough for church picnics. , and he looked after the boy who was slipping down an alley and Raid, "The condemn littlo whelp. Wait till I catch him."