THE BAD BOY WORKS FOR A DEACON.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3831, 26 October 1883, Page 4

THE BAD BOY WORKS FOR A DEACON.

"Want to buy any cabbagesr " said the bad boy to tbe grocery man, as he stopped at tho door of thu grocery, dressed in a blue wamus, his breeches tucked in his boots, and an old hat on his head, with a hole that let out his hair through the top. He had got out of a democart wagon, and was holding the lines hitched to a horse about forty years old, that leaned against the hitching post to rest. " Only a shilling apiece." "0, go 'way,' said the grocery man. " I only pay three cents apiece." And ihen he looked at tho boy and said, "Hello, Hennery, is that you? I have missed you all the week, and now you come ou to me sudden, disguised as a granger. What does this fill mean ?" " It means that 1 havo been the victim of as vile a conspiracy as ever was known since Ca-sar was stabbed and Mark Antony orated over his prostrate corpse in tho Roman forum, to an audience of supes and scene shifters," and the boy dropped tbe lines on the sidewalk, said, " Whoa, gol darn you," to the horse that was asleep, wiped his boots on tho grass in front of tho store and came in, and seated himself on the old liii.lt' bushel. "There this, seems liko home again."

" What's"the row ? Who has been playing it on you?" and tho grocery man smelled a sharp trade in cabbages, as well as other smells peculiar to the farm. " Well, I'll tell you. Lately our folks have been constantly talking of the independent life of a fanner, and how easy it is, and how they would liko it if I would learn to bo a farmer. They said thero was nothing like it, and several of the ncig-hbors joined iv and said I had the natural ability 'tobe one of the most successsful fanners in the state. They all drew pictures of the fun it was to work on a farm, where you could get your work done and take your fish-pole and go off and catch fish, or a gun and go out and kill game, and how you could ride horses, kill game, and pitch hay, and smell the sweet perfume, and go to husking bees aud dances, and everything, and thoy got mo all worked up so I wanted to go to work on a farm. Then an old deacon that belongs to our church, who runs a farm about eight miles out of town, he came on the scene and said he wanted a boy, and if I would go out and work for him he would bo easy on me because he knew my folk, and wo belong to the same church. I can sco it now. It was all a put up job on mo, just like they play three card nionte on a fresh stranger. I was took in. By gosh, I have been out there a week, and bore's what left of me. The only way I got a chance to come to town was to tell the farmer I could sell cabbages to you for a shilling a piece. I knew you sold them for fifteen cents and I thought you would give a shilling. So the farmer said he would pay mo my wages in cabbages at a shilling apiece and only charge me a dollar for tho horse and wagon to bring them in. So you only pay three cents. Here are thirty cabbages which will come to ninety cents. I pay a dollar for the horse, and when I get back to the farm I owe the fanner ten cents, besides working a week for nothing. Oh, it is all right. J. don't kick, but this ends farming for Hennery. I know when 1 have got enough of an easy life a farm. I prefer a hard life, breaking stones on the streets, to an easy, dreamy life on a farm." " They did play it on you, didn't thoy," said the grocery man. "But wasn't the old deacon a good man to work for?" "Goodman notion'," said tho boy, as he took up a piece of horse raddish and

began to grate it on the inside of his rough hand. "'I tell you there's a heap of difference in a deacon in Sunday-school, tolling about sowing wheat and tares, and a deacon out on a farm in a hurrying season, when there is hay to get in and wheat to harvest all the same time. I went out to the farm on Sunday evening with the deacon and his wife, and thoy couldn t talk too much about the nice time we would have, and the fun ; but the deacon changed more than forty degrees in five minutes after we got out to the farm. He jumped out of the wagon and pulled off his coat, and let his wife climb out over the wheel, and yelled to the hired girl to bring out the milk pail, and told me to fly around and unharness tho horse, and throw down a lot of hay for all the work animals, and then told me to run down to the pasture and drive up a lot of cows. The pasture was half a mile away, and the cows were scattered in tho woods, and the mosquitos were thick, and I got all covered with mud and burrs, and stung with thistles, and when I got the cattle near to the bouse, tho old deacon yelled to me that I was slower than molasses in the winter, and then I took a club and tried to hurry the cows, and ho yelled at me to stop hurrying 'cause I would retard the flow of milk" By gosh I was mad. I asked _ for a mosquito bar to put over me next timo I went after the cows, and tho people all laughed at mo, and when I sat down on the fence to scrape the mud off my Sunday pants, the deacon yelled liko be does in the revival, only ho said, 'come, come, procrastination" is the thief of time. You get up and hump yourself and go and feed the pigs.' Ho was so darn mean that I could iifit help throwing a burrdock burr against the side of tho cow he was milking, and it struck her right in the flank on the other side from where the deacon was. AVell, you'd a died to sec the cow jump up aud blah All four of her feet were off the ground at a time, and I guess most of them hit the deacon on his Sunday vest, and the rest hit tho milk pail, and the cow backed against the fence aud hollered, and the deacon was all covered with milk and cow hair, and he got up aud thro wed the threelegged stool at tho cow and hit her on the horn and it glanced off and hit me on Uie pants just as I went over the fence to feed the pigs- I didn't know a deacon could talk so easy at a cow, and come so near swearing without actually saying cuss words. "Well, I lugged swill until I was homesick to my stomach, and then I had to clean off horses, and go to the neighbors about a mile away to borrow a lot of rakes to use the next day. 1 was so tired I almost cried, and then I had to draw to barrels of water with a well bucket, to cleanse for washing the next day, and by that time I wanted' to die. It was most nine o'clock, and I began to think about supper, when the deacon said all they had was bread and milk for supper Sunday night, and I rassclcd with a tin basin of skim milk, and some old back number bread, and wanted to go to bed, but the deacon wanted to know if I was heathen enough to want to go to bod without evening prayers. Thcro was no one thing I was less mashed cm than evening prayers about that minute, but I had to take a prayer half an hour long on top of that skim milk, and I guess it curdled the milk, for I hadn't been in bed more than half an hour before I bad the worst colic a boy ever had, and I thought I should die all alone up in that garret, on the floor, with nothing to make my last hours pleasant but some rats playing with ears of seed corn on the floor, and mice running through some dry pea pods. But, 0, how different the deacon talked in the evening devotions from what he did when the cow was galloping on him in the barn yard. AVell, I got though tho colic and was just getting to sleep when tlie deacou yelled for me to get up and hustle down stairs. I thought maybe tho house- was on fire, 'cause I sin'elled smoke, and I got into my trousers and came down stairs on a jump yelling "fire," when the deacon grabbed me and told mo to get down on my knees, and beforo I knew it ho was into the morning devotions, and then ho said "amen" and jumped up and said for us to fire breakfast into us quick and get to work doing the chores. I looked at the clock and it was just three o'clock in the morning, just the time pa comes home and goes to bed in town, when he is running a political campaign. AVell, sir, I had to jump from one thing to another from three o'clock in the morning till nine at night, pitching hay, driving reaper, raking and binding, shocking wheat, hoeing corn, and everything, and I never got a kind word. I spoiled my clothes, and I think another week would make a private of me. But during it all I had the advantage of a pious example I toll you ; you think moro of such a man as tho deacon if you don't work for him, but only see him when he comes to town, and you hear him sing Heaven is my Home, "through his nose. Heaven is farther from his homo than any place I ever heard of. Ho would be a good mate on a Mississippi steamboat if ho could swear, and I guess he could soon learn. Nov,-, you take these cabbages and give me ninety cents, and I will go homo and borrow ten cents to make up up the dollar, and send my chum back with the horso and wagon and my resignation. I was not cut out for a farmer. Talk about fishing, the only fish I saw was a sale white fish we had for breakfast one morning, which was salted by Noah, in the ark ; aud while tho grocery' man was unloading the cabbages the boy went off to look for his chum, and later the two boys were seen driving off towards the farm with two fish poles sticking out of tho hind end of the wagon. — Peck's Sun.