His Pa Goes Calling. 
“Say. you are getting too all tired smart,” 
said a grocery man to the bad boy as he 
pushed him into a corner by a molasses bar¬ 
rel. and took him by the neck and choked 
him so his eyes stuck out. “You have 
driven away several of my best customers, 
and now, confound you, I am going to 
have your life,” and he took up a cheese 
knife and began to sharpen it on his boot. 
“What’s the—gurgle—matter,” asked 
the choking boy, as the grocery man’s fin¬ 
gers let up on his throat a little, so he could 
speak. “1 haint done nothin’.” 
“Didn’t you hang up that dead gray tom 
cat by the heels, in front of my store, with 
the rabbits I had for sale? I didn’t notice 
it until the minister called me out in front 
of the store, and pointing to the rabbits, 
asked what good fat cats were selling for. 
By crimus, this thing has got to stop. You 
have got to move out of this ward, or I 
will.” 
The boy got his breath and said it wasn't 
him that put the cat up there. He said it 
was the policeman, and he and his chum 
saw him do it, and he just come in to tell 
the grocery man about it, and before he 
could speak he had his neck nearly pulled 
off. The boy began to cry, and the grocery 
man told him he was only joking, and 
gave him a box of sardines, and they made 
up. Then he asked the boy how Ids pa put 
in liis New Year’s, and the boy sighed and 
said: 
“We had a sad time at our house New 
Year’s. Pa insisted in making calls, and 
ma and me tried to prevent it, but he said 
he was of age, and guessed he could make 
calls if he wanted to, so he looked at the 
morning paper and got the names of all Hie 
places where they were going to receive, 
and he turned his paper collar, and chang¬ 
ed ends with his cuffs, and put some arnica 
on his handkerchief, and started out. Ma 
told him not to drink anything, and he said 
he wouldn’t, but he did. He was full the 
third place he went to. Oh, so full. Some 
men can get full and not show it, but when 
h|^ets full, he gets so full his back teeth 
. - j^d flic liquor crowds his eyes out. 
and his mouth gets loose and wiggles all 
over his face, and he laughs all the time, 
and the perspiration just oozes out of him r 
and his face gets red. and he walks so 
wide. Oh, he disgraced us all. At one 
place he wished the hired girl a Happy 
New Year twenty times, and hung his hat 
on her elb<>w, and tried to put on a rubber 
hall mat for his overshoes. At another 
place he walked on a lady’s train, and car¬ 
ried away a an I basket full of bananas and 1 
oranges. Ma wanted my chum and me to 
follow pa and bring him home, and about 
dark we found him in the door yard of a 
house where they have statues in front of 
the house, and he grabbed me by the arm, 
and mistook me for another caller, and in¬ 
sisted on introducing me to a marble statue 
without any clothes on. He said it was a 
friend of his, and it was a winter picnic- 
He hung his hat on an evergreen, and put 
his overcoat on the iron fence, and I was so 
mortified I almost cried. My chum said if 
in's pa made such a circus of himself he 
would sand bag him. That gave me an 
idea, and when we got pa most home E 
went and got a paper box covered with red 
paper, so it looked just like a brick, and a 
bottle of tomato ketchup, and when we got 
pa up on the steps at home, I hit him with 
the paper brick, and my chum squirted the 
ketchup on his head, and we demanded his 
money, and then he yelled murder, and we 
lit out. and ma and the minister, who was 
making a call on her, all the afternoon, 
they came to the door and pulled pa in. 
Iie said he had been attacked by a band of 
robbers, and they knocked his brains out,, 
but he whipped them, and then ma saw the 
ketchup brains oozing out of his head, and 
she screamed, and the minister said, ‘Good 
Heavens, he is murdered,’ and just then I 
came in the back door and they sent me 
after the doctor, and they put pa on the 
lounge, and tied up his head with a towel 
to keep his brains in, and pa began to snore, 
and when the doctor came in it took them 
half an hour to wake him, and then he was- 
awful sick to the stunmiick, and ma asked 
the doctor if he would live, and the doctor 
analyzed the ketchup, and smelled of it, 
and told ma he would be all right if he had 
a little Worcester sauce to put on with the 
