Peck's Son Interests His Pa.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4809, 7 June 1884, Page 1

Peck's Son Interests His Pa.

"Come in the back room, Hennery, I want to (alk with you," said the groceryman to tbe bad boy, as he came in laughing and slapping his hands on his legs. " I have heard something to-day that has hurt me as much as though you was my own boy;" and the grocery man looked as though it wouldn't take many good-sized onions to make the tears come.

"Great jewbillikins ! what is It P " asked the bad boy, as his face sobered down at the look of pain on the face of his mercantile friend. " What is the matter ? Won't your credifors accept ten cents on a dollar?" and the boy looked like a lawyer ready to help a client out, and reached into a cinnamon bag and took out a handful of cinnamon:

"No, nothing bttbat kind," said the groceryman. "I have concluded not to fail. But I am told on good authority that you have become bad again, and that yon have been playing the meanest trick on your pa that you have ever played. The minister told me he was coming in from a . country funeral the other day,, and he overtook your pa on tho road M Lith a gun, and asked him .to'get in and ride, and your pa's pants were all torn, his boots and gun full of snow, and bo was so scared that he kept looking around all the way to town, expecting to be shot in the back. Now what kind of a way; is that to treat the author of your being ?"

" There, there, don't put on any extra sadness," said tbe boy as he quartered an orange. "Pa is all right. He wanted us to stir him up. You see, since I have been good, pa has been neglected, and he has become sour, and don't fit. He told ma that what be wanted wag excitement, and he had got to'have it. Ma told me about it, and tbe state of mind pa was in, and I felt sorry for pa. Ma told me to try and think up something that would sort of wake up pa, or he would relapse into a state of melancholic, and have to hire a doctor. I told my chum about pa's case, and he said it was too bad to see a man suffer thßt way, and we must do something to, save his life. So we agreed to take pa out rabbit hunting. I asked pa if he didn't want to go with us, and he jumped right up and yelled, and said it would tickle him half to death to go. I told him where there was a place four miles out of town where there w as dead loads of rabbits, but the man that owned the farm drove everybody off. Pa said there couldn't no man drive him off, and for us to come on. Well, you'd a dide. Pa wasn't afraid of anybody, until the man hollored to git. You see, we went out to the farm, and stationed pa by a fence, and my chum and me went on to the other side of a piece of woods to scare rabbits towards pa. Then we went up to the farm house, where a man lived that we knew, and told him we wanted to scare a man out of bis boots, and he said all right, go ahead. So we borrowed some farmer's clothes and old plug hats, and went behind the bam and yelled to pa to get off that farm. Pa said for us to go to iho bad place. He said he came out to hunt rabbits, and by gosh he was goiog to hunt rabbits. Then my chum and me started towards pa, wading through the snow, and pa thought we were grown men seven feet high. When we got about twenty rods from pa we told him to ' git, 1 and ha was going to argue with us, when we pulled up our guns and ilred both barrels at him.

We bad blank cartridges, but pa thought he felt shot striking him everywhere, and he started for a barbed wire fence, and we loaded our guns again and tired just as pa got on the fence, and he yelled murder. You know these barbed wire fences, don't you ? Tbe barbs catch on your pants and hang on. Well, pa got caught by the pant 3 and couldn't get over, and we kept firing, aud he dropped his gun in the snow and tried to tear the fence down, and kept yelling, ' For God's sake, gentlemen, snare me life. I don't want, any of yonr rabbits.' I got to laughing so I couldn't shoot, and I laid down in a snow-bank, and my chnrn kept shooting. Pa finally got off ■ the fence and burrowed in a snow-bank, and held up a piece of his shirt which the fence tore off, for a flag of truce, and we quit, and he stuck-up his head and saw me laying there on the snow, and pa thought his gun had gone of!' and killed one of the farmers, and my chum said, ' Great hevings, you have killed him.' At that pa grabbed his guv and run for the

road, and started lor town, and that's where the minister overlook him. Along towards night me and my chum came home with four rabbits, and we told pa he was a pretty rabbit hunter to leave before the rabbits got to running, and that we looked all around for him. He looked surprised, and asked us if wo struck any corpses around on that farm, and I thought I should bast. We told him we didn't see any, and then he told us that he was standing there waiting for rabbits, when a gang of about fifteen roughs came and ordered him away, and he refused to to go. He said they opened fire on him, and he threw himself into a hollow square, the way they used to do in the army, threw up. entrenchments of snow, and when he was finally surrounded and had to retreat he saw the ground covered with dead and wounded, and he expected he had wiped out an entire neighborhood. He said it was singular we didn't see any corpses. I asked him how he tore his pants and he said the gang shot them all to pieces. Then we told him of the joke we had played on him, and how we fired blank cartridges at him as he was trying to get over the fence, and he tried to laugh, but couldn't. He was inclined to be mad at first, but finally he said this was more like business, and he hadn't felt so well before since we initiated him into the Masons, and we could play anything on him, and do anything we chose except let him alone. So, you see, I am not so bad as you think. Pa enjoys it, and so does my chum and me. Eh ! old rutabaga, do you see P" , "O, yes, that is all right if your 7m likes that kind of fun, but if you was my boy I would maul you till you couldn't stand."

Just then a big cannon fire cracker that the boy had lit and laid on the floor exploded, and the grocery man went out the back door bare-headed, while the boy went out the front door whistling, "Be sure and call me early, for I'm to be Queen of the May."