PECK'S BAD BOY.

Thames Star, Volume XIV, Issue 4477, 11 May 1883, Page 2

PECK'S BAD BOY.

His Pa Plats Jokes.

" Say, do you think a little practical joke does any hurt;," asked the bad boy of the grocery man as he came in with his Sunday suit on, and a bouquet in his buttonhole, and pried off a couple of figs from a new box that had been just opened. " No, sir," said the grocery man, as he licked off the syrup that dripped from, a quart measure, froai which he had been filling a jug. " I hold that a man who gets mad at a practical joke, that is, one that does not injure him, is a fool, and he ought to be shunned by all decent people. That's a nice bouquet you hare in your coat. What is it, panties? Let me smell of it," and the groceryman bent orer in front of the boy to take a whiff at the bouquet. As he did so a stream of water shot out of the innocent | little bouquet and struck him full in the face, and ran down over his shirt, and the grocery man yelled murder, and fell over a barrel of aze helves and scyth snaths, and then grouped around for a towel to,, wipe his face. ~—^s

"You candum skunk said the grocery man to the boy, as he took up an aze helve and started for him, '' what kind of a golblasted squirt gun you got there. I will maul you by thunder," and he rolled up his shirt sleeves. " There, keep your temper. I took a test vote of you on the subject of practical "jokes, before the machine began to play on the conflagration that was raging on your whisky nose, and you said a man. that would get mad at a joke was a fool, and now I know it. Here, let me show it to you. There is a rubber hose runs from the bouquet, inside my coat to my pants pocket, and there is a bulb of rubber that holds half a pint, and when a feller smells of the posy, I squeeze the bulb, and you see the result. It's fun, where you don't squirt it on a fellow that gets mad."

The grocery man said he would giro the boy half a pound of figs if he would lend the bouquet to him for half an hour to play it on a customer of his, and the boy fixed it on the grocery man, and turned the nozzle so it would squirt right back into the grocery man's face. He tried it on the first customer that come in and got it right in his own face, and then the bulb in his pants pocket got to leakiag and the rest of the water run down the grocery man's trousers leg, and he gare it up in disgust, and handed it back to the boy. " How was it that your pa had to be carried home from the sociable in s hack the other night ?" asked the grocery man as he stood close to the store so his pants leg would dry, " He has not got to drinking again, has he P"

"O, no," said the boy,, as he filled the bulb with vinegar, to practice on his chum, " It was this boquet that got pa into the trouble. You see I got pa to smell of it, and I just filled him chuck full of water. He got mad and called me all kind of names, and said I was no good on earth, and I would fetch up in state's prison, and then he wanted to borrow it to wear to the sociable. He said he would hare more fun than you can shake a stick at, and I asked him if he didn't think he would fetch up in state's prison, and he said it was different with a man. He said when a man played a joke there was a certain dignity about it that was lacking in a boy. So I lent it to him, and we all went to the sociable in the basement of the church. I never see pa more kitteny than he was that night. He filled the bulb with ice water, and the first one he got to smell of his button-hole bouquet was an old maid who thinks pa is a heathen, but shelikes to be made something of by anybody that wears pants, and when pa sidled up to her and began talking about what a great work tbe Christian wimmen of the land were doing in educating tbe heathen, she felt real good, and then she noticed pa's posy in his buttonhole and she touched it, and then reached over her beak to smell of it. Pa he squeezed the bulb, and about half a tea* cup full of water struck her right in the nose, and some of it went into her strangle place, and, O, my, didn't she yell. The sisters gathered around her, and they took her into tbe kitchen, and she told them pa had slapped her with a dish of ice cream* and the wimmen told the minister and the deacons and they went to pa for an explanation, and pa told tuena it was not so, and tbe minister got interested and got near pa, and pa let the water go at him, and hit him on tbe eye, and then a deacon got a dose, and pa laughed, and then the minister, who used to go to college aud be a hazer, and box, he got mad and squared off and hit pa right by the eye, and one of the deacons he kicked pa, and pa got mad and said he could clean out the whole sliebang, and began to pull off his coat, and when they bundled him out of doors, and ma got mad to see pa abused, and sue left the sociable, and I had to stay and eat ice cream and things for the whole family. Pa says that settles it with him. He says they haven't pot any more Christian charity in that church than they got in a tannery. His eyes were just getting orer being black from the sparring lessons, and now he bas got to go through the oysters and beefsteak cure again. He says' it is alt owing to me."

" Well, what has all this got to do with your putting up signs in front of my store, ' Rotten Eggs' and • Frowzy Butfcer'~~ff specialty,' said the grocery man as he took the boy by the ear and pulled him round, ' You have got an idea' you are smart, and I want you to keep away from here. The next time I catch you here I shall call the police and hare you pulled, Now git!'"

The boy pushed his ear back on the side of his head where it belonged, took oui a cigarette and lit it, and after puffiag smoke in the face of the grocery cat that was sleeping on the cover to the sugar barrel* he said : "If I was a provision pirate, that never sold anything but what was spoiled so it couldn't be sold, in a .first,class store, who cheated in weights and measures, who bought only wormy figs and decayed codfish, who got his butter from a fat rendering establishment, his cider from a vinegar factory, and his sugar from a glucose factory, I would, not insult the son of one the first families. Why, air, I could go out on the corner, and when I saw customers coming here I could tell a story that would turn their stomachs, and send them to the grocery on the next corner. Suppose I should tell them that the cat sleeps in the dried apple barrel, that the mice made nests in the prune box, and rats run riot through the raisins, and that you never wash your hands except on decoration Day and Chistmas, that you wipe your nose on your shirt sleeves, and that you have the itch, do you think your business would be improved? Suppose I should tell the customers that you - buy sour kraut from •

Mooden-shoe Polacker, who makes it out of pieces of cabbage that he gets by gathering swjll, and you sell that stuff to respectable people, could you pay your rent? If I should tell them that you put lozenges in.the collection plate at church, and charge the minister forty cents, a pound for oleomargarine, you would have to close up Old man, ■_ I am onto you, and now you apologise for pull' ing my ear." The grocery man turned pale during the recital, and finally said the boy was one of the best little fellows in this town, and the boy went out and hung up a sign in front, *' Girl wanted- to cook."