Home > Authors Index > George W. Peck > Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa > This page
Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, a fiction by George W. Peck |
||
Chapter 31. His Pa Joins A Temperance Society... |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XXXI. HIS PA JOINS A TEMPERANCE SOCIETY. THE GROCERY MAN SYMPATHISES WITH THE OLD MAN--WARNS THE BAD BOY THAT HE MAY HAVE A STEP-FATHER!--THE BAD BOY SCORNS THE IDEA--INTRODUCES HIS PA TO THE GRAND "WORTHY DUKE!"--THE SOLEMN OATH--THE BRAND PLUCKED FROM THE BURNING
"Well, I don't know but he does look as though he was getting old," said the grocery man, as he took a piece of yellow wrapping paper, and charged the boy's poor old father with a dozen herrings and a pound of crackers; "But there is no wonder he is getting old. I wouldn't go through what your father has, the last year, for a million dollars. I tell you, boy, when your father is dead, and you get a step-father, and he makes you walk the chalk mark you will realize what a bonanza you have fooled yourself out of by killing off your father. The way I figure it, your father will last about six months, and you ought to treat him right, the little time he has to live." "Well, I am going to," said the boy, as he picked the herring bones out of his teeth with a piece of a match that he sharpened with his knife. "But I don't believe in borrowing trouble about a stepfather so long before hand. I don't think Ma could get a man to step into Pa's shoes, as long as I lived, not if she was inlaid with diamonds, and owned a brewery. There are brave men, I know, that are on the marry, but none of them would want to be brevet father to a cherubin like me, except he got pretty good wages. And then, since Pa was dissected he is going to lead a different life, and I guess I will make a man of him, if he holds out. We got him to join the Good Templars last night." "No, you don't tell me," said the grocery man, as he thought that his trade in cider for mince pies would be cut off. "So you got him into the Good Templars, eh?" "Well, he thinks he has joined the Good Templars, so it is all the same. You see my chum and me have been going to a private gymnasium, on the west side kept by a Dutchman, and in a back room he has all the tools for getting up muscle. There, look at my arm," said the boy, as he rolled up his sleeve and showed a muscle about as big is an oyster. "That is the result of training at the gymnasium. Before I took lessons I hadn't any more muscle than you have got. Well, the dutchman was going to a dance on the south side the other night, and he asked my chum to tend the gymnasium, and I told Pa if he would join the Good Templars that night there wouldn't be many at the lodge, and he wouldn't be so embarrassed, and as I was one of the officers of the lodge I would put it to him light, and he said he would go, so my chum got five other boys to help us put him through. So we steered him down to the gymnasium, and made him rap on the storm door outside, and I said who comes there, and he said it was a pilgrim who wanted to jine our sublime order. I asked him if he had made up his mind to turn from the ways of a hyena, and adopt the customs of the truly good, and he said if he knew his own heart he had, and then I told him to come in out of the snow and take off his pants. He kicked a little at taking off his pants, because it was cold out there in the storm door dog house, but I told him they all had to do it. The princes, potentates and paupers all had to come to it. He asked me how it was when we initiated women, and I told him women never took that degree. He pulled of his pants, and wanted a check for them, but I told him the Grand Mogul would hold his clothes, and then I blind-folded him, and with a base ball club I pounded on the floor as I walked around the gymnasium, while the lodge, headed by my chum, sung, 'We wont go home till morning.' I stopped in front of the ice-water tank and said 'Grand Worthy Duke, I bring before you a pilgrim who has drank of the dregs until his stomach won't hold water, and who desires to swear off.' The Grand Mogul asked me if he was worthy and well qualified, and I told him that he had been drunk more or less since the reunion last summer, which ought to qualify him. Then the Grand Mogul made Pa repeat the most blood-curdling oath, in which Pa agreed, if he ever drank another drop, to allow anybody to pull his toe-nails out with tweezers, to have his liver dug out and fed to dogs, his head chopped off, and his eyes removed. Then the Mogul said he would brand the candidate on the bare back with the initial letters of our order, 'G. T.,' that all might read how a brand had been snatched from the burning. You'd a dide to see Pa flinch when I pulled up his shirt, and got ready to brand him. "My chum got a piece of ice out of the water cooler, and just as he clapped it on Pa's back I burned a piece of horses hoof in the candle and held it to Pa's nose, and I guess Pa actually thought it was his burning skin that he smelled. He jumped about six feet and said, 'Great heavens, what you dewin',' and then he began to roll over a barrel which I had arranged for him. Pa thought he was going down cellar, and he hung to the barrel, but he was on top half the time. When Pa and the barrel got through fighting I was beside him, and I said, 'Calm yourself, and be prepared for the ordeal that is to follow.' Pa asked how much of this dum fooling there was, and said he was sorry he joined. He said he could let licker alone without having the skin all burned off his back. I told Pa to be brave and not weaken, and all would be well. He wiped the perspiration off his face on the end of his shirt, and we put a belt around his body and hitched it to a tackle, and pulled him up so his feet were just off the floor, and then we talked as though we were away off, and I told my chum to look out that Pa did not hit the gas fixtures, and Pa actually thought he was being hauled clear up to the roof. I could see he was scared by the complexion of his hands and feet, as they clawed the air. He actually sweat so the drops fell on the floor. Bime-by we let him down, and he was awfully relieved, though his feet were not more than two inches from the floor any of the time. We were just going to slip Pa down a board with slivers in to give him a realizing sense of the rough road a reformed man has to travel, and got him straddle of the board, when the dutchman came home from the dance, fullern a goose, and he drove us boys out, and we left Pa, and the dutchman said, 'Vot you vas doing here mit dose boys, you old duffer, and vere vas your pants?' and Pa pulled off the handkerchief from his eyes, and the dutchman said if he didn't get out in a holy minute he would kick the stuffing out of him, and Pa got out. He took his pants and put them on in the alley, and then we come up to Pa and told him that was the third time the drunken dutchman had broke up our Lodge, but we should keep on doing good until we had reformed every drunkard in Milwaukee, and Pa said that was right, and he would see us through if it cost every dollar he had. Then we took him home, and when Ma asked if she couldn't join the Lodge too, Pa said, 'Now you take my advice, and don't you ever join no Good Templars. Your system could not stand the racket. Say, I want you to put some cold cream on my back.' I think Pa will be a different man now, don't you?" The grocery man said if he was that boy's pa for fifteen minutes he would be a different boy, or there would be a funeral, and the boy took a handful of soft-shelled almonds and a few layer raisins and skipped out. _ |
||