THAT EMERSON BOY.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 230, 5 March 1875, Page 3

THAT EMERSON BOY.

(From Detroit Free Press.)

That Emerson boy is dead, and there isn't any one around that house to make fun. He was a cheerful, lively boy, and he did his best to make that household put on the mantle of joyfulness. Emerson often remarked that Bob didn't seem ever to sit down and think of the grave and death, and he probably never did. No, Bob wasn't of that make. He wanted to have fun. Both his ears were nearly worn up by being cuffed so much, and it took a Avhole row of currant-bushes to furnish whips to dust his jacket tor the summer. Emerson didn't know what fun was until Bob was eight years old. Then the boy began to launch out. He would bore gimletholes in the bottom of the water-pail, put cartridges in the coal stove, unscrew the door-knobs, fill the kerosene lamp with water, and a good thrashing didn't burden his mind over five minutes. Sometimes his father would take him by the hair and yank him up to the sofa and sit down and ask—- " Robert Parathon Emerson, what in blazes ails ye?" " It's the yaller jaunders, I guess," Bob would meekly reply. "Robert, don't you want to be an angel?" the old man would continue.

" And have wings?" " Yes, my son." " And fly higher'n a kite?" "Yes." "And fight hawks?" " Y-e-s, I guess so." " Bet your beef I would—whoop! Bully for the angels!" "That's sacrilege, that is!" the old man would remark, and he would jerk Bob's hair some more, and declare that the young rascal was bound for the gallows. After lying under the pear tree for six minutes Bob would recover from his sadness, and go over to the barn, and run the pitchfork through the strawcutter, harness up the cow, and stick pins into the family horse. One night he brought home a wolf-trap and set it in the middle of the wood-shed floor to catch a rat. He chuckled a good deal that evening at the thought of what would happen to the rats, and he fell asleep and dreamed that he was a hand-organ, and that someone stole the crank to him, so that he could'nt be played on. Just before going to bed old Emerson went out after a scuttle of coal, and he stepped his bootless foot into that trap. He made a mighty spring and uttered a mighty yell, and it took two men ten minutes to spring the trap off his leg. " It's that boy's work !" he groaned, as he nursed his foot, and he took up the bootjack, limped into the bedroom, and gave Bob an awful clip just as the child was dreaming of playing baseball with a mermaid. " I'll pound ye to death if ye don't stop this fooling!" cried the old man ; but he hadn' been out of the bedroom ten minutes before Bob was planning to stop up the chimney next day and smoke everybody out of the house. It wasn't many days before he fixed a darning-needle in the cushion of his father's arm-chair and bounced the old man three feet high ; and his licking hadn't got over smarting before he exploded a lirecracker ill his mother's snuff-box. That night the old man said to him as he took him by the ear : " Kobert Parathon Emerson, do you ever think of where you will go to ?" "Yes, sir," he answered; "I'll go to bed purty soon." Then he got another mauling, and went to bed. to dream that he was a three-tined pitchfork, and that a man was using him to load hay with. Poor boy ! Even three days before he died, and while on his dying bed, he managed to slip an eight-ounce tack into his father's left boot and got up another circus.