THE BAD BOY.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3803, 22 September 1883, Page 4

THE BAD BOY.

<• Come in," said tho grocery man to the bad boy, as the youth stood on the steps m an uncertain sort of a way, as though he did not know whether ho would be welcome or not. " I tell you, boy, I pity you. I understand your pa has got to drinking again. It 'is too bad. I can t think oi anything that humiliates a boy, and makes him so ashamed, as to have a father that is in tho habit of hoisting in too much benzine. A boy feels as though everybody was down on him, and I don't wonder that such boys often turn out bad. What started your pa to drinking again V' "O, ma thinks it was losing money on tho Chicago races. You see, pa is great on pointers. He don't usually bet unless ho has got a sure thing, but when he gets what they call a pointer, that is, somebody tolls him a certain horse is sure to wm, because tho other horses arc to bo pulled back, he thinks a job has been put up, and if he thinks he is inside the ring he will bet. He says it does not do any hurt it you and he argues that a man who wins lots of money can do a great deal of good with it. But he had to walk home from tho Chicago races all the same, and he has been steaming ever since. Pa can't stand adversity. But I guess we have got him all right now. He is the scurtest man you over saw," and tho boy took a can-opener and began to cut tho zinc under the stove, just to see if it would work as well on zinc as on tin.

" What, you haven't been dissecting him again, have" you?" said tho grocery man, as he pulled a stool up beside the boy to hear tho news. "How did you bring him to his (senses f ' "Well, ma tried having the minister talk to pa, but pa talked Bible, about taking , a little wine for tho stomach's sake, and gave illustrations about Noah getting full, so tho minister couldn't brace him up, and then ma had .some of tho sisters come and talk to him, but he broke them all up by talking about what an appetite they had for champagne punch when they wove out in camp Inst summer, and they couldn't have any effect on him, and so ma said she guessed I would have to exercise my ingenuity on pa again. Ma has got an idea that I have got some sense yet, so I told her that if she would do just as I said, me and chum ■would scare pa so he would swear off. She said she would, and we went to work. First I took pa's spectacles down to an optician, Saturday night, and had the glasses taken out and a pair put in their place that would magnify, and I took them homo and put them in pa's spectacle ease. Then I got a suit of clothes from my chum's uncle's trunk, about half the size of pa's clothes. My chum's undo is a very small man, and pa is corpulent. I got a plug hat three sizes smaller than pa's hat, and took tho name out of pa's hat and put it in tho small hat. I got a shirt about half big enough for pa, and put his initials on tho thing under the bosom, and got a number fourteen collar. Pa wears seventeen. Pa had promised to brace up and go to church Sunday morning, and ma put these small clothes where pa could put them on. I told ma, when pa woke up, to toll him he looked awfully bloated, and excite his curiosity, and then send for me." "You didn't play such a trick as that on the poor old man, did you?" said the grocery man, as a smilo came over his foce.

"You bet! Desperate diseases require desperate remedies. Well, ma told pa lie looked awfully bloated, and that his dissipation was killing , him, as well as all the rest of the family. Pa said ho guessed he wasn't bloated very much, but he got _up and put on his 3pcetacles and looked at himself in the glass. You'd adidc to see him look at himself. His face looked as big as two faces, through the glasses, and his nose •was a sight. Fa looked scared, and then ho held up his hand and looked at that. His hand looked like a ham. Just then I came in and I turned pale, with some chalk on my face, and I begun to cry, and I said: ' 0 pu, what ails you ? You are so swelled up I hardly knew yon.' Pa loooked sick to his stomach, and then he tried to got on the pants. omy! it was all I could do to keep from laughing to see him pull them pants on. He could just get his legs in, and when I got a shoe-horn and gave it to himhc was mad. He said it was a mean boy that would give his pa a shoo-horn to put on pants with. The pants wouldn't come around pa by ten inches' and pa said ho must have eat something that disagreed •with him, and he laid it to watermelon. Ma stuffed her handkerchief in her mouth to keep from laffing, when she see pa look at hisself. The legs of tiic pants were so tight pa couldn't hardly breathe, and ho turned pale and said : ' Hennery, your pa is a mighty sick man,' and then ma and mo both laughed, and he said we wanted him to die so we could spend his life insurance in riotous living. But -whenpa put on that condensed shirt, ma she laid down on the lounge and fairly yelled, and I laughed till my side ached. Pa got it over his head, and got his hands in the sleeves, and couldn't got it either, and 'he couldn't sec us laugh, but ho could hear us, and lie said : ' It's darned funny, ain't it, to have a parent swelled up this way. If I bust you will both he sorry.' Well, ma took hold of one side of the shirt, and I took hold of the other, and we pulled it on, and when pa's head came up through the collar his face was fairly blue. Ma told him she ■was afraid that he would havo a stroke of apoplexy before he got his clothes on, and I gunss pa thought so, too. He tried to get the collar on, but it wouldn't go halfway around his neck, and he looked in the glass and cried, he looked so. He sat down in a chair and printed, ho was so out of breath, and the shirt and pants ripped, and pa said there wus no use living if ho was going to be a rival to a fat woman in the side-show. Just then I put the plug hut on pa's head and ifc was so small it was going to roll off, when pa tried to fit it on his head, and then took it off and looked inside of it to see if it was Ms hut, mid when he found his name in it, ho said : ' Take it nway. My head is all wrong, too.' Then he told mo to go for the doctor, mighty quick. I got the doc and told him what we were trying to do with pa, and he said he would finish the job. So the doc came in and pa was on the lounge, and when the doc saw him he said it was lucky ho was called just as ho was, or we would have called an undertaker. He put some pounded ice on pa's head the first thing, ordered the shirt cut open, nnd we got the pants off. Then he gave pa an emetic, and had his feet soaked, and pa said: 'Doc, if you will bring mo out of this I will never drink another drop.' The doc told pa that his life was not worth a button if lie ever drank iiyain, and loft about half a pint of sugar pills to be fired into pa every live minutes. Ma unci me sat lip with pa all day Sunday, and Monday morning I changed the spectacles, and took the clothes homo, and along , about noon pa said ho felt as though he could get up. Well, you never sec a ticklcdcr man than ho was when he found the swelling had gone down so ho could get his pants nnd shirt on, and ho says that doctor is the best in town. Ma says lam a smart boy, !ir\d pa has taken the pledge, and we arc all right. Say, you don't think there is anything wrong in a boy playing it on his pa, once in a while, do you ?''

"Not much! You have very likely saved your pa's life. No, sir, joking is all right when by so doing you can break a person of a bad habit," and the grocery man cut a chew of tobacco oi? a piece of plug that was on the counter, which the boy had soaked in kerosene, and before he had fairly got it rolled in his cheek he spit it cut and began to gag, and as the boy started leisurely out the door, the groceryman said: "Look-a-here, condemn you, don't you ever tamper with my tobacco ugain, or, by thunder ! I'll maul you," and he followed tho boy to the door, spitting cotton all the way, and as the boy went around the corner the groceryman thought how different a joke seemed when it was on somebody else. And then he turned to go in and rinse tho kerosene out of his mouth, and found a sign on a box of new green apples, as follows: " Colic or cholera infantum. You pays your money and takes your choice."—Peck's Sun.