THE BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3874, 17 December 1883, Page 4

THE BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

" An' blc a boy ns Gc >r_io hid Wad nmk' tho very dc'il go mad '. " --B.RKS "I AM DEAD, AM If" •' Where 1 uivc you been for a -week back ':'' asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as tbe boy pulled the tail-board out of the delivery waggon accidentally, and let a couple of bushels of potatoes roll out into the gutter. "I haven't seen you around here and you look pale. You haven't been sick, have you. " " No, I havo not been sick. Pa locked mo up in the bath-room for two days and two nights, and didn't givo me nothing to eat but bread and water. Since he has got religious, ho seems to be harder than ever on me. Say, do you think religion softens a man's heart, or docs it give him a caked breast ? I 'spect Pa will burn mc at the stake next."

The grocery man said that when a man had truly been converted, his heart -was softened, and he was always looking for a chance to do good, aud be kind to the poor, but if he only had this galvanized religion, this roll plate piety, or white-washed reformation, he was liable to be a harder citizen than before. " What mado your Pa lock you up in the bath-room on bread and water. " ho asked.

" Well," says tho hoy, as ho eat a couple of salt pickles out of a jar on the sidewalk, " Pa is not converted enough to hurt him, and I know cd it, and I thought it would be a good joke to try him and sec if he was so confounded good, so I got my chum to dress up in a suit of Ids sister's summer clothes. Well, you wouldn't believe my chum would look so much like a girl. He would fool tho oldest inhabitant, You know how fat he is. He had to sell his bicycle to a slim fellow that clerks in a store, 'cause he didn't want it any more. His neck is just as fat and there arc dimplos in it, and with a dress low in the neck, and long at the trail, he looks.as tall as my Ma. He busted one of his sister's slippers getting them on, and her stockiugs were a good deal too big for him, but he touked his drawers down in them, and tied a suspender around his leg above the knee, and they stayed on all right. Well, he looked killiu', I should prevaricate, with his sister's muslin dress on, starched as stilt' as a shirt, and her reception hat with a white feather as big as a Newfoundland dog's tail. Pa said he had got to go down town to sec some of tho old soldiers of his regiment, and I loafed along behind. My chum met Pa on the corner, and asked him where tho Lake Shore Park was. She said she was a stranger from Chicago, tha'l her husband had deserted her, and she didn't know but she would jump into tho lake. Pa looked in my chum', eye and sized her up, and said it would be a shame to commit suicide, and asked if she didn't wind to take a walk. My chum said ho should titter, aud ho took Pa's arm and they walked up to the lake and back. Well, you may talk about joining tho church on prowbation all you please, but they got thenarm around a girl all the same. They started for the Court House Park, as I told jny chum to do, aud I went and got Ma. It was about time for the soldiers to go to tho exposition for tho evening bizness, find I told Ma we could go down and see them go by. Ma just throwed a fihawl over tier head, and we started down through the park. When we got near Pa and my chum, I told Ma it was a shame for so many people to be sitting around lally-gagging right before folks, and she mid it was disguslin', and then I pointed to my chum who had his head on Pa's shoulder, find Vti was patting it. They was on the iron scat, and we came right up behind them, aud when Ma saw Pa's bald head, I thought she would bust. She knew his head as quick as she sat eyes- on it. My chum asked Pa if lie was married, and lie said he was a widower. He said his wife died fourteen years ago, of liver complaint. Well, Ma shook like a leaf, and I could hear her new teeth rattle just like chewing strawberries with sand in them. Then my chnm said 'Do you love me .' Pa was just leaning down to kiss my chum, when Ma couldn't stand it any longer, and she went x'ight around iv front of them, and. she grabbed my chum by the hair, and it all came off, hat and all, und my chum jumped up and Ma scratched him in the face,' and my chum tried to get his hands in his pants pocket to try to get his handkerchief to wipe off the blood on his nose, and Ma she turned on Pa, and lie turned palo and then she was going for my chum again, when he said, ' Oh, let me up on a feller!'

and he sees she was mad, and he grabbed the hat and hair off the gravel walk, and took the skirt of his sister's dress in his hand, and lifted out for home on a gallop, and Ma took Pa by the elbow, and said, "You are a nice old party, ain't you . _ I am dead, am I. Died of liver complaint fourteen'years ago, did I? You au animated corpse on your hands, sir. "When they started home pa seemed to be as weak as a cat, and couldn't say a word, and I asked if I could go the exposition, and they said I could. I don t know what happened after they got home, but pa was sitting up for me when I got back, and ho wanted to know what I brought ma down there for, and how I knew he was thero." " I thought it would help pa out of the scrape, and so I told him it was not a girl ho was with at all, but it was my chum, and he laffed at first, and told ma it was not a girl, but ma said she knew a darn sight better. Sho guessed she could tell a girl.' "Then pa was mad, and he said I was at the bottom of the whole bizness, and he locked me up, and said I was enough to paralyse a saint. I told him through the keyhole that a saint that had any sense ought to tell a boy from a girl, and then he throwed a chair at me through the transom. Tho worst of the whole tiling is my chum is mad at me cause ma scratched him, aud ho says that lets him out. He don't go into any more schemes with me. Well, I must be going. Pa is going to have my measure taken for a raw hide, ho says, and I have got to stay at homo from the sparring match and loam my Sundayschool lesson."