CHAPTER XII. {Illustration: “The farmer had graced hold of a wire sign across the street."} “He got up, got his hat untangled, told the farmers he was obliged to them for their courtesy and then he called me one side and said: “'Hennery, this attempt on your part to murder me was not the success that you expected, but you keep on and you will get me all right. Now, as a business man, I want to say we have got to get out of this town to-night or we will be arrested and sent to the penitentiary; besides, I will have to pay a thousand dollars damage at the least calculation. Get me a carriage for home, and you stay and set this machine on fire and skip back to town in time for the evening train south, and we will go where the climate is more genial.' “Just then the steers we saw in the road came into the field through the fence we had broken, and when they smelled the blood they began to paw and beller, and look like they would run at dad, so the farmers got dad into a milk wagon that was going to town, and when the wagon started dad was pouring a cup of milk on him where the gasoline had scorched him when it exploded, and I walked in town helping the fellows drive the steers, and here I am, alive and ready to travel at 8 p. m. {Illustration: “Hennery, This Attempt on Your Part to Murder Me Was Not the Success You Expected."} “If my chum comes around tell him I will write him from Hot Springs and give him the news.” “If that don't beat anything I ever heard of,” said the old grocery man. “I have always been afraid of those automobiles, and when one of the horns blow I go in the first gate, say my prayers and wait for it to go by and run over some one farther down the block. Did your dad say anything about buying an automobile after he came to?” “Yes, as I remember it, he said he would see me in h—— first, or something like that. He remarked, as he got in the milk wagon, that every man that owned an automobile ought to be examined by an insanity expert and sent to the penitentiary for letting concealed weapons carry him. “Well, good-by, old man,” and the bad boy went limping out of the grocery to go home and tell his mother that he and dad had been scoring up for the good time they were going to have when they got out on the road for dad's health. CHAPTER XII. The Bad Boy Writes His Chum Not to Get So Gay—Dad's Experience with the Pecarries. “Hot Springs, Ark.—My dear old chum: Dad and I got here three days ago, and have begun to enjoy life. We didn't leave home a minute too soon, as we would have been arrested for running over that banana peddler, and for arson in setting a load of hay on fire and destroying the farmer's pants in our automobile accident. Ma writes that a policeman and a deputy sheriff have camped on our front doorstep ever since we left, waiting for dad and I to show up. Dad wants me to tell you to notify the officers that they can go plum, as we shall never come back. Tell them we have gone to Panama, or Mexico, or any old place. “By the way, kid, I shall have to give you a little fatherly advice. When dad and I were at the bank getting a wad to travel with, I asked one of the clerks how it was that the bank dispensed with your services, after you had been there nearly a year, and had got your salary up to $60 a month, and were just becoming worth your salt. He said you got too fresh, that every new responsibility that was put upon you caused your chest to swell, and that you walked around as though you were president of the bank, and that you got ashamed to carry your lunch to the bank, to eat it in the back room, but went out to a restaurant and ordered the things to eat that came under the 15-cent list, whether you liked the food or not, just to show off; and instead of quietly eating the wholesome lunch your mother put up for you, and being good natured, you ate the restaurant refuse, and got cross, and all for style, showing that you had got the big head; and that you demanded an increase of salary, like a walking delegate, and got fired, as you ought to have been; and now you are walking on your uppers, and are ashamed to look into the bank, which you think is going to fail because you have withdrawn your support. Dad arranged with the managers to take you back on probation, so you go and report for duty just as though you had been off on a vacation, and then you try and have some sense. Dad says you should get to the bank before you are expected, and stay a little while after it is time to quit, and don't watch the clock and get your coat on before it strikes, and don't make a center rush for the door, as though you were escaping from jail. Let those above you see that there is not enough for you to do, and that you are anxious to help all around the place. Look upon a bale of money just as you would look upon a bale of hay if you were working in a feed store, and don't look covetous upon a pile of bills, and wonder how much there is in it, and think how much you could buy with it if it was yours. It is just a part of the business, that pile of money is, and it is not your place to brood over it with venom in your eyes, or some day you will reach out and take a little, and look guilty, and if they don't find you out, you will take a bigger slice next time, and go and blow yourself for clothes as good as the president of the bank wears, and some night you will open a small bottle of wine, and put your thumbs in the arm-holes of your vest and imagine you are 'it,' and when you flash your roll to pay the score, the quiet man at another table in the saloon, who has been drinking pop, and whom you were sorry for, he looked so forlorn, will take you into the police station, and they will search you, and you will break down and blubber, and then it is all off, and the next day you will be before a judge, and your broken-hearted mother will be there trying to convince the judge that somebody must have put the money in your pocket to ruin you, some one jealous of your great success as a banker, but the judge will know how you came by the money, and you will go over the road, your mother goes to the grave, and your friends will say it is a pity about you. {Illustration: “Dad Sat in the Parlor with a Widow Until the Porter Had to Tell Him to Cut It Out.“} “Men who employ boys know that half of them will never amount to a tinker's dam, a quarter of them will just pass muster, and if they can't run the place in a year they will find another job, and two out of the 20 will be what are needed in the business. The boy who is always looking for another job is the one that never finds one that suits him. The two boys out of the twenty will seem to look a little rustier each year as to clothes but their round, rosy faces will change from year to year, the jaws begin to show strength, the eyes get to looking through you, and the forehead seems to expand as the brain gets to working. “The successful boys out of the bunch remind me of the automatic repeating rifle, that you put ten cartridges in and pull the trigger and shoot ten times with your eyes shut, if you want to, and it hits where you point it. Every time an employer pulls the trigger on a successful business boy, and a good idea of business is fired, the recoil puts a new idea into the chamber, and you pull again, and so on until the magazine of the brainy boy is emptied, when you load him up again, and he is ready for business, and the employer wouldn't be without him, and would not go back to the old-fashioned one-idea boy, that goes off half-cocked when not pointed at anything in particular, and whose ideas get stuck in the barrel and have to be pulled out with a wormer, and primed with borrowed powder, and touched off by the neighbors, most of whom get powder in their eyes, unless they look the other way when the useless employee goes off, for anything in the world. So, chum, you go back to the bank and become an automatic repeater in business, with ideas to distribute to others, instead of borrowing ideas, and you will own the bank some day. {Illustration: “I Got a Gambler to Look Cross at Dad."} “Now, kid, you don't want to go peddling this around among the neighbors, but dad and I are having the time of our lives here, and since dad has begun to get acquainted with the ladies here at the hotel, and the millionaire sports, he is getting well, and acts like old times. He sat in the parlor of the hotel with a widow the first night until the porter had to tell him to cut it out. Say, I got asleep three or four times on a lounge in the parlor, waiting for dad to get to the 'continued in our next' in talking with that widow about his wealth, and his loneliness since ma died. He said he didn't know what he was worth, because he didn't pay any attention to any of his bonds and securities, except his Standard Oil stock, because the dividends on that stock came regular and increased a little every quarter. Gee, but I wanted to tell her that all the interest he had in Standard Oil was a gallon kerosene can with a potato stuck in the spout, and when we went to bed I told him that woman's husband was behind the door of the parlor all the time listening, and he had a gun in his hip pocket, and would call him out for a duel the next morning, sure. Dad didn't sleep good that night, and the next morning I got a gambler to look cross at dad and size him up, and dad didn't eat any breakfast. After breakfast I had the hotel stenographer write a challenge to dad, and demand satisfaction for alienating the affections of his wife, and dad began to get weak in the knees. He showed me the challenge, and I told him the only way to do in this climate was to walk around and punch his cane on the floor, and look mad, and talk loud, and the challenger would know he was a fiery fighter, and would apologize, and dad walked around town and through the hotel office most of the day, fairly frothing at the mouth, and he thinks he has scared the challenger away, and, as the woman is gone, dad thinks he is a hero. “But the worst thing has happened and it will take a week to grow new skin on dad's legs. He got acquainted with a bunch of men who were bear hunters and sports, and they talked of the bear shooting in Arkansas, and dad told about how he had killed tigers, lions, elephants and things until they thought he was great. Dad never saw one of those animals except in a menagerie, but when they suggested that he go with them on a bear hunt, he bit like a bass, and the whole bunch went off in a buckboard one morning with guns, lunches, hounds, bottles, and all kinds of ammunition. They didn't let me go but when the crowd came back about midnight, and they carried dad up to his room, and sent for a doctor, one of the horse race men who went along told me all about it. {Illustration: “Dad was up on a limb praying, his gun on the ground and his coattails chewed by the wild pigs."} “He said they went out in a canebrake and stationed dad on a runway for bear, and put in the dogs about a mile away in the swamp, and they left him there for five hours, and when they went to where he was, there was a drove of wild hogs, or peccaries, under a tree, and dad was up, on a limb praying, his gun on the ground; his coat was chewed by the wild pigs, and the wild animals were jumping up to eat his shoes. The fellows hid behind trees and listened to dad confess his sins, and pray, and promise to do better, and be a good man, and when a wild pig would gnash his teeth and make a jump at him, he would talk swear words at the pig, and then he would put up his hands and ask forgiveness, and promise to lead a different life, and say what a fool he was to be off down here in the sunny south being eaten alive by wild hogs, when he ought to be home enjoying religion. Just as dad was about to die there on the limb of a shagbark hickory, the fellows behind the trees touched off a small dynamite cartridge and threw it under the tree, and when it exploded the wild hogs ran away, dad fell off the limb, and he was rescued. He was a sight, for sure, when they brought him to the hotel; his clothes were torn off, his stomach lacerated, and when he was stuck together with plasters, and I was alone with him, he said he was as good a bear hunter as ever came down the pike, but he never worked in a slaughter house, and didn't know anything about slaughtering pigs, and besides, if he ever got out again, and able to use a gun, he would put that bunch of hunters that took him out in the canbrakes under the sod. He said while he sat up the tree praying for strength to endure the ordeal he had a revelation that there wasn't a bear within a hundred miles, and that those fellows had the hogs trained to scare visitors to Hot Springs, so they could be easy to rob. He said one fellow borrowed $50 off him to pay into the state treasury for wear and tear on the wild hogs. Well, dad had forgotten about the monkey-wrench in his system, and I guess we are going to enjoy ourselves here in the old-fashioned way. Yours all right, “Hennery.” CHAPTER XIII. The Bad Boy and His Dad Have Trouble with a New Breakfast Food—Dad Rides a Bucking Broncho. San Antonio, Texas.—My Dear Chum: Dad and I left Hot Springs because the man who kept the hotel where we stopped got prejudiced against me. I suppose I did carry the thing a little too far. You see dad has got into this breakfast food habit, and reads all the advertisements that describe new inventions of breakfast food, and he has got himself so worked up over the bran mash that he is losing appetite for anything substantial, and he is getting weak and nutty. Ma told me when I went away with dad that she wanted me to try my best to break dad of the breakfast food habit, and I promised to do it. Say, kid, if you ever expect to succeed in life, you have got to establish a reputation for keeping your promises. Truth is mighty, and when anybody can depend upon a boy to do as he agrees his fortune is made. Dad saw a new breakfast food advertised in an eastern magazine, and as the hotel people only kept thirty or forty kinds of mockingbird food for guests, dad made me go out to the groceries and round up the new kind. I brought a box to the table at breakfast, and dad fell over himself to fill his saucer, and then he offered some to eight boarders that sat at our table. Dad had been bragging for a week about how he had adopted the breakfast food fad, first for his health, and then to get even with the beef trust. He had convinced the boarders at our table that it was a patriotic duty of every citizen to shut down on eating meat until the criminal meat trust was ruined. {Illustration: “Hennery, I Feel as Though Your Dad Was not Very Long for This World.” } “The breakfast food I put up on dad was some pulverized cork that I got at a grocery out of a barrel of California grapes. It looked exactly like other breakfast food, but you'd a died to see dad and several invalid Southern colonels, and two women who were at the table, pour cream on that pulverized cork, and springle sugar on it, and try to get the pulverized cork to soak up the cream, but the particles of cork floated on top of the cream, and acted alive. An old confederate colonel, who had called dad a dam yankee ever since we had been there, and always acted as though he was on the point of drawing a gun, took the first mouthful, and after chewing it a while he swallowed as though his throat was sore, but he got it down, and ordered a cocktail, and looked mad at dad. Dad noticed that the others were having difficulty in masticating the food, and so he pitched in and ate his food and said it was the finest he ever tasted, but the rest of the crowd only took a spoonful or two, and et fruit. One woman who is there to be cured of the habit of betting on the races, got the cork in amongst her false teeth and it squeaked when she chewed, like pulling a cork out of a beer bottle. They all seemed to want to please dad, and so they munched away at the cork, until the woman with the false teeth had to leave the table, then a colonel went out, and then all quit the table except dad and I, and by that time dad felt as though he had swallowed a life preserver, and he said to me: “'Hennery, either the baths or the climate, or something has upset me, and I feel as though your dad was not very long for this world. Before I die I want you to confess to me what that stuff is that I have been eating, and I can die in peace!' “I told him that he had wanted a light breakfast, and I though there was nothing quite so light as cork, and that he was full clear to the muzzle with pulverized cork, and he couldn't sink any more when he took a bath. Dad turned pale and we went out in the office and found that all the people who sat at our table, and ate breakfast food were in the hands of doctors, and dad went in the room with them, and each had a doctor, and how they got it out of them I don't know, as I was busy organizing a strike among the bell boys. I told them they could double their wages by striking at exactly at ten o'clock, when all the boarders wanted cocktails sent to their rooms. {Illustration: Dad Among the Cowboys.} “They struck all right, and the breakfast food people had all got pumped out, and then it came my turn. Dad gave me a licking, the boarders kicked at me, the landlord ordered me out of the house, and the striking bell boys who had their places filled in ten minutes, chased me all over town, and when I got back to the hotel dad had bought tickets to San Antonio, because the doctor told him to get out on the prairies and take horseback exercise to shake the pulverized cork and the monkey-wrench out of his system, and everybody threw stones at the buss that we rode to the depot in. Gosh, but I hate a town where genius has no chance against the mob element. The worst was that woman with the false teeth, because she lost them somewhere, and had to hold her handkerchief over her mouth while she called me names when the porter took me by the collar and the pants and flung me into the buss. Dad told the porter, when he handed out the regular 'tip,' that he would have made it large if the porter had taken an axe to me. Dad is getting so funny he almost makes me laugh. “Well, kid, we arrived here next day, and got acclimated before night. Dad bought a wide gray cowboy hat, with a leather strap for a band, and began to pose as a regular old rough rider, and told everybody at the hotel that he was going to buy a ranch, and run for congress. Everybody here is willing a northern man should buy a ranch, but when he talks about running for Congress they look sassy at him, but dad can look just as sassy as anybody here. He told all around that he was a cavalry veteran of the war, and wanted to get a horse to ride that would stir up his patriotic instincts and his liver, and all his insides, and a real kind man steered dad to a livery stable, and I knew by the way the natives winked at each other that they were going to let him have a horse that would jounce him all right. “They saddled up a real nice pony for me, but when they led out the horse for dad I knew that trouble was coming. The horse was round shouldered on the back, and when they put the saddle on the horse humped up and coughed most pitiful, and when they fastened the cinch the horse groaned and the crowd all laughed, A negro boy asked me if my old man was ever on a horse before, and when I told him that dad had eaten horses in the army, the boy said that horse would eat him, 'cause he was a bucker from Buckersville in the western part of the state. {Illustration: “Dad Began to Pose as a Regular Old Rough Rider."} I told dad the horse was a dangerous bucker, but he tipped his hat on one side and said he had broken more bucking bronchos than those Texas livery men ever saw. Dad borrowed a pair of these Mexican spurs with a wheel in them as big as a silver dollar, and the men held the horse by the bridle while dad got on, and I must say he got on like he knew how. He asked which was the road to Houston, and we started out of town. “Well, sir, I have been in a good many runaways, and I was filling a soda fountain once when it exploded, and I have been on a toboggan when it run into a cow, and I have been to a church sociable when a boy turned some rats loose, and a terrier went after them right among the women, but I never was so paralyzed as I was to see dad and that horse try to stay together. The first two miles out of town the horse walked, and acted as though it was going to die, and my pony would get away ahead and have to wait for dad and the camel to come up. Dad was mad because they gave him such a slow horse. “'What are those things on your heels for?' I says to dad. 'Why don't you run the spokes into his slats?' I said, just to be sociable. “'Never you mind me,' says dad. 'After I have looked at the scenery a while I will open the throttle on this dromedary, and we will go and visit the Pyramids.' “I was a little ahead and I did not catch dad in the act of kicking open the throttle, but I heard something that sounded like a freight train wreck, and dad and the horse went by me like a horse race, only that horse was not on the ground half the time, and he didn't go straight ahead, but just lowered his head between his legs and jumped in the air and came down stifflegged and then jumped sideways, and changed ends and did it all over again, all over the prairie, and dad was a sight. His eyes stuck out, and his teeth rattled, and every time the horse came down on his feet dad seemed to get shorter, as though his spine was being telescoped up into his hat. I think dad would have fallen off the first jump, only he had rammed the spurs in amongst the horse's ribs, and couldn't get them out. Gee, but you never saw such actions, unless you have seen a horse go plum crazy. The horse kept giving dad new fancy side steps, and jumps until dad yelled to me to get a gun and shoot him or the horse, and he didn't care which. I yelled to dad to loosen up on the bridle, and let the horse run lengthways instead of sideways, and I guess he did, for the horse lit out for some musquite trees and before I could get there the horse had run under a limb and scraped dad off, and when I got there dad was lying under a tree, trying to pray and swear all to wonst, and his spurs were all blood and hair, and things a horse wears on the inside of his self, and the horse was standing not far away, eating grass, and looking at dad. If dad had had his revolver along he would have killed the horse, but the horse seemed to know he had been fooling with an unarmed man. I got dad righted up, and he rode my pony to town, and I had to lead the bucking horse, and he eat some of the cloth out of my pants. {Illustration: Dad on a Bucking Broncho.} “Say, this is a bully place down here; just as quiet and sunshiny as can be, only dad is in a hospital for a week or so, having operations on where the horse let him drop once in a while on the saddle, and the livery man made dad buy the horse 'cause he said dad had ripped his sides out with the spurs. Dad says we will have a picnic when he gets out of the hospital. He is going to buy some dynamite and take the horse out on the prairie and blow him up. Dad is so fond of dumb animals. I got your letter about your being in love. Gee, but you can't afford it on your salary. “Yours quite truly, “HENNERY.” CHAPTER XIV. The Bad Boy and his Dad Return from Texas—The Boy Tells the Groceryman About the Excitement at San Antonio. The old groceryman sat on an up-turned half bushel measure in front of the store drying his old-fashioned boots. As he fried the soles in front of the red hot stove, there was an odor of burnt leather, but he did not notice it, as the other odors natural to the dirty old grocery seemed to be in the majority. The door opened quietly and the old man got up to wait on a possible customer, when the bald boy rushed in and dropped on the floor the queerest animal the old man and the cat had ever seen. The cat got up on the counter on a pile of brown wrapping paper, curved its back and purmeyowed, and the strange animal jumped into a half barrel of dried apples and began to dig with all four feet, as though to make a bed to lie in. “Take that animalcule, or whatever it is, out of them apples,” said the old groceryman, picking up a fire-poker. “What is it, and where did it come from, and when did you get back, and how is your pa, and why didn't you stay away, and what do you want here anyway?” and the old man eyed the animal and the bad boy, expecting to be bitten by one and bilked by the other. “That's a prairie dog from Texas, if you are not posted in ornicothology,” said the boy, as he took the prairie dog up and put him on the counter near the cat. “Dad is all right, only we were driven out of Texas by the board of health.” “I told that pirate chum of yours when he read me your letter, that you would last in Texas just about a week, and that you would be shipped home in a box. They are not as tolerant with public nuisances down south as we are here. But what did you do there to get the board of health after you?” and the old man pushed the cat's back down level, and held her tail so she couldn't eat the prairie dog. “Well, sir, it was the condemnedest outrage that ever was,” said the boy, as he gave the prairie dog some crackers and cheese. “You see, dad told me I could pick up some pet animals while I was in Texas, and I got quite a collection while dad was in the hospital. Here is one in my pocket,” and the boy took a horned toad out of his pocket, about as big as a soft-shelled crab, and put it in the old groceryman's hand. {Illustration: “That's a Prairie Dog from Texas.” } “Condemn you, don't you put a poisonous reptile in my hand,” said the odd man, as he dropped the ugly-looking toad on the floor, and got behind the show case, while the boy laughed fit to kill. “Now tell your story and vamoose, by ginger, or I will ring for the patrol wagon. You would murder a man in his own house, and laugh at his spasms.” “O, get out, that toad and this prairie dog are as harmless as your old cat there,” said the boy, as he watched the old man tremble as though he had jim-jams. “I have got a tarantula and a diamond-back rattlesnake that will pizen you, though. I'll tell you about our getting fired out of Texas, if you will stand still a minute. You see, I had my collection of pets in my room at the hotel, and I had the bell boys bribed, and the chambermaid would only come in our room while I was there to watch the pets. The night dad got back from the hospital, where he went to grow some new bones and things on his insides, after he rode the bucking broncho, a man got me the prettiest little animal you ever saw, sort of white and black, about the size of a cat, and I took it to the room and put it under the bed in a box the man gave me. Dad had gone to bed, and was snoring so you could cut it with a knife.” “Say, you knew that animal was a skunk all the time, now tell me, didn't you,” said the old groceryman. “You was a fool to take it, when you knew what a skunk will do.” “Yes, I thought it was a skunk, all right,” said the boy, “but the man told me the animal had been vaccinated, and wouldn't ever make any trouble for any one, and he would warrant it. I thought a warranted skunk was all right, and so I went to bed in a cot next to dad's bed. I guess it was about daylight when skunks want to suck eggs, that he began to scratch the box, and squeak, and I was afraid it would wake dad up, so I reached down and took off the cover of the box. From that very identical moment the trouble began. Dad heard something in the room and he rose up in bed and the animal sat on the foot of the bed and looked at dad. Dad said 'scat,' and threw a pillow at my pet, and then all was chaos. I never exactly smelled chaos, but I know it when I smell it. O, O, but you'd a dide to see dad. He turned blue and green, and said, 'Hennery, someone has opened a jack pot, call for the police!' I rushed for the indicator where you ring for bell boys, and cocktails, and things, and touched all the buttons, and then got in bed and pulled a quilt over my head, and dad went into a closet where my snakes and things were, and the vaccinated skunk kept on doing the same as he did to dad, and I though I should die. Dad heard my snake rattle his self in the box, and he stepped on my prairie dog and yelled murder, and he got into my box of horned toads, and my young badger scratched dad's bare feet, and a young eagle I had began to screech, and dad began to have a fit. He said the air seemed fixed, and he opened the window, and sat on the window sill in his night shirt, and a fireman came up a ladder from the outside and turned the hose on dad, then the police came and broke in the door, and the landlord was along, and the porter, and all the chambermaids, and everybody. I had turned in all the alarms there were, and everybody came quick. The skunk met the policemen halfway, and saluted them as polite as could be, and they fell back for reinforcements; dad got into his pants and yelled that he was stabbed, and I don't know what didn't happen. Finally the policemen got my skunk under a blanket and walked on him, and he was squashed, but, by gosh, they can never use that blanket again, and I told 'em so.” {Illustration: “Dad Heard Something at Night and Rose Up in Bed."} “It's a wonder they didn't put a blanket over you and kill you too,” said the old groceryman, as he moved away from the horned toad, which the boy had placed on the counter. “What did they do to you then? What way did your dad explain it? How long did you remain at the hotel after that?” “We didn't stay hardly any after that,” said the boy, as he pushed the prairie dog along the counter toward the groceryman's cat, hoping to get them to fighting. “The landlord said we dam yankees were too strenuous for his climate, and if we didn't get out of the house in fifteen minutes he would get a gun and see about it, and he left two policemen to see that we got away. Dad tried to argue the question with the landlord, after all the windows had been opened in the house. He said he had come to Texas for a quiet life, to get away from the climate of the north, but he had no idea any landlord would turn animals into a gentleman's room, and he would sue for damages; but the bluff did not work, and we left San Antonio on a freight train, under escort of the police, and the board of health. Say, that freight train smelled like it had a hot box, but nobody suspected us. When we got most to New Orleans dad said, 'Hennery, I hope this will be a lesson to you,' and I told him two more such lessons would kill his little boy dead.” {Illustration: “We Left Under Escort of the Police."} “What did you do with your clothes?” said the groceryman, as he snuffed around, as though he thought he could smell something. “O, we bought new clothes in New Orleans, and let our old ones out of the window of a hotel with a rope. A man picked them up, and they sent him to the quarantine for smallpox patients. O, we came out all right, but it was a close call. Say, I bet this prairie dog can lick your cat in a holy minute,” and the boy pushed the dog against the cat, said “sik em,” and the cat scratched the dog, the dog yelled and bit the cat, the cat run up the shelves, over the canned goods, and tipped over some bottles of pickles, and the old groceryman got crazy, while the boy took his prairie dog under his arm, and his horned toad in his hand and started to go out. “I'll drop in some day and have some fun with you,” says the boy. “If you do I will stab you with a cheese knife,” said the groceryman as he picked up the broken glass. CHAPTER XV. The Bad Boy's Joke with a Stuffed Rattlesnake—He Tells the Old Groceryman About his Dad's Morbid Appetite. The old groceryman was sitting on the counter, with his legs stretched lengthwise, his heels resting on a sack of flour, and his back against a pile of wrapping paper, his eyes closed, his pipe gone out, and the ashes sifting from it on the cat that was asleep in his lap. He was waiting for a customer to come in and buy something to start the day's business. He had sprinkled the floor and swept the dirt up in a corner, and he was sleepy. There was a crash in front of the door, a barrel of axe handles and garden tools had been tipped over on the sidewalk, the door opened with a jerk and closed with a slam, and the bad boy came in with a long paper bax, perforated with holes, slammed it on the counter beside the groceryman's legs, and yelled: “Wake up, Rip Van Winkle, the day of judgment has come, and you are still buried. You get a move on you or the procession will go off and leave you. Say, are you afraid of rattlesnakes?” and the bad boy shook the paper box, when an enormous rattle came from within, as though a snake had shaken its tail good and plenty. “Great Scott, boy, I believe you have got a rattlesnake in that box,” and he jumped off the counter and grabbed an iron fire poker, while the boy got out his knife to cut the string on the box. “Now, look here, I am suffering from nervous prostration, and a snake turned loose in this store would settle it with me. I am at your mercy, but by the holy smoke, if I am bitten by that snake I will kill you and your old snake. Now take that box out of here,” and the old man picked up a hatchet and got behind a barrel. “Well, wouldn't that skin you,” said the bad boy, as he sharpened his knife on a piece of old cheese, and felt of the edge. “Here you have been telling me for years what a brave man you were, and how you were not afraid of anything that wore hair, and now you have fits because a little five-foot rattlesnake, with only ten rattles on, makes a formal call on you. Gee, but you are a squaw. Why, there is no danger in the bite of a rattlesnake, since science has taken the matter up. All you got to do, when a snake bites you and you begin to turn black, is to drink a couple of quarts of whisky, and bind a poultice of limberg cheese on the wound, and go to bed for a week or ten days, and you come out all right,” and the bad boy began to cut the string. “Now, let up until I wait on these customers,” said the old man, as he went to the door and let in a committee of women who were to buy some supplies for a church sociable. The women lined up on each side of the store, looking at the canned things on the shelves, and the old man was trying to be polite, when the bad boy opened the box and laid on the floor a stuffed rattlesnake that was as natural as life, and touched a rattle box in his pocket, and the trouble began. The women saw the snake curled up, ready to spring, and they all went through the door at once, tipping over everything that was loose, and screaming, while the old man, when he saw the snake, got into the front show window and trembled and yelled for the police. A policeman rushed in the store and when he saw the snake he backed out of the door, and the bad boy sat down on a box and began to eat some raisins out of a box, as though he was not particularly interested in the commotion. “Arrest that boy with the snake,” said the groceryman. “Come out of that wid your menagerie,” said the policeman, shaking his club. {Illustration: “Arrest That Boy with the Rattlesnake,” Said the Groceryman.} “Come in and get the snake if you want it,” said the boy, “I don't want it any more, anyway,” and he took the stuffed snake up by the head and laid it across his lap, and began to shake the rattles, and laugh at the groceryman and the policeman, and the crowd that had collected in front of the store. The policeman came in laughing, and the old groceryman crawled out of the show window, and all breathed free again, and finally the policeman went and drove the crowd away, and went on his beat again, after shaking his club at the boy; the groceryman, the snake and the cat remained in the store. The groceryman took a swig out of a bottle of whisky, to settle his nerves, and the took up his snake and pushed it towards the cat, which ran up a stepladder and yowled. “Do you know, I kind of like you,” said the old groceryman, as he went up behind the bad boy and took him by the throat, “and I think it would be a great thing for the community if I should just choke you to death. You are worse than a mad dog, and you are just ruining my business.” “I will give you just ten seconds to take you hand off my neck,” said the bad boy, pulling out a dollar watch, “and when the time is up, and you have not let loose of me, I will turn loose a couple of live snakes I have in my pocket, and some tarantulas, and you will probably be bitten and swell up like a poisoned pup, and die under the counter.” “All right, let's be friends,” said the old man, as he let go of the bad boy. “If your parents and the rest of the community can stand having you around, alive, probably it is my duty to be a martyr, and stand my share, but you are very trying to the nerves. By the way, put that confounded stuffed snake in the ice box, and sit down here and tell me something. I saw your father on the street yesterday, and he is a sight. His stomach is twice as big around as it was, and he looks troubled. What has got into him?” “Well, I'll tell you, dad has got what they call a morbid appetite. Whatever you do, old skate, don't you ever get a morbid appetite.” “What is a morbid appetite?” asked the old man; as he peeled a banana and began to eat it. “I can always eat anything that is not tied down, but I don't know about this morbid business.” “Scientists say a morbid appetite is one that don't know when it has got enough. Dad likes good things, but he wants all there is on the table. Now, at New Orleans, before we came home, dad and I went in a restaurant to get some oysters, and you know the oysters there are the biggest in the world. When we got there dad was hungry, and the thought of raw oysters on the half shell made him morbid. He had a blue point appetite, and ordered four dozen on the half shell, for himself, and one dozen for me. Well, you would have dropped dead in your tracks if you had been there. Six waiters brought on the five dozen oysters, and each oyster was as big as a pie plate. Six dozen oysters would cover this floor from the door to the ice box. Dad almost fainted when he saw them, but his pride was at stake, and he made up his mind if he didn't eat them all the waiters would think he was a tenderfoot, and so he started in. The first oyster was as big as a calf's liver, and nobody but a sword swallower could ever have got it down. Dad cut one oyster into quarters, and got away with it, and after a while he murdered another, and after he had eaten three he wanted to go home and leave them. Then is the time his little boy got in his work. I told dad that if he didn't eat all the oysters the waiters and the people would mob him, that it was a deadly offense to order oysters and not eat them, and that they would probably kill us both before we got out of the place. He said, 'Hennery, I don't like oysters like I used to, and it seems to me I couldn't eat another one to save my life, but if, as you say, we are in a country where a man's life is held so cheaply, by the great horn spoons, I will eat every oyster in the house, and the Lord have mercy on me.' I told him that was about the size of it, and he would eat or die, and maybe he would die anyway, and just then a wicked-looking negro with a big oyster knife came to the table and looked ugly at dad and said, 'Have another dozen?' and dad said, 'Yes,' and then he began to eat as though his life depended on it, and I could hear the great wads of oysters strike with a dull thud on exposed places inside of dad, and before he got up from the table he had eaten them all, and he told the man we would be in again to lunch after awhile. Dad is the bravest man I ever saw, and don't you forget it. He would have come out all right, I suppose, and lived, if it hadn't been for his devilish morbid appetite for travel and adventure. Quick as we got out of the oyster place dad wanted to take a steamboat ride down the river to the Eades Jetties at the mouth of the river, and we went on board, and had a nice ride down to the mouth. After we had looked over the jetties where Eades made an artificial canal big enough for the largest ocean steamers to come up to New Orleans, the passengers wanted the captain to run the boat outside the bar, into the blue ocean, where the waves come from. Gee, but I hope I may live long enough to forget the ride. We hadn't got a boat's length outside the bar before the boat began to roll and toss, and I held on to dad's hand, and wished I was dead. I told him my little tummy ached, and I wanted a lemon. Dad said my little tummy, with its three oysters in it, was not worth mentioning, and told me to look at him. Talk about your Mount Pelee, and your Vesuvius, those volcanoes were tame and uninteresting, compared to dad, leaning over the railing, and shouting words at the sharks in the water. Why? he just doubled up like a jack knife, one minute, and then straightened up like an elephant standing on its hind legs in a circus, the next minute, and he kept saying, 'Ye-up,' and all the passengers said 'poor man.' I told them he was not so poor, for he owned a brewery at home. Dad finally went to sleep with his arm and head over the rail, and his body hanging limp, down on deck. The boat turned around and went back into the mouth of the river, and the passengers were thanking the captain for giving them such a lovely ride, when I thought I would wake dad up, and so I touched him on the shoulder and asked him if he didn't want a few dozen more raw oysters, and he yelled murder, and began to have hydrophobia again, and bump himself. You know the way people do when they are dissatisfied with the medicine the doctor gives. Well, we got back to New Orleans, and dad took a hack to the hotel, and told the driver not to pass any saloon where there were oyster shells on the sidewalk. We came home next day. Well, I guess I will get my snake out of the ice box, and go home and comfort dad. But wait a minute till that Irishman puts that chunk of ice in the ice box, and see if he notices the snake.” Just then there was a sound as if a house had fallen, a two hundred pound cake of ice struck the floor, and the Irishman came running through the grocery with his ice tongs waving, and yelling, “There's a rattlesnake in yer ice box, mister, and ye can go to h—l for yer ice.” The groceryman looked at the boy, and the boy looked at the groceryman, the cat looked at both, the boy took his snake under his arm and went out, and the old man said: