Peck’s Bad Boy 
“Why don’t you take an ice pick and 
clean the dirt out from under your finger 
nails,” said the groceryman to the bad boy, 
as he came in the store and stroked the cat 
the wrong way, as she lay in the sun on 
the counter, on a quire of manilla paper. 
“Can’t remove the dirt for thirty days. It 
is an emblem of mourning. Had a funeral 
at our house yesterday,” and the boy took 
a pickle out of a tub and put it in the cat's 
mouth, and shut her teeth together on it, 
and then went to the show case, while the 
groceryman, whose back had been turned 
during the pickle exercise, thought by the 
way the cat jumped into the dried apple 
barrel and began to paw and scratch with 
all four of her feet, and yowl, that she was 
going to have a fit. 
“I hadn’t heard about it,” said the gro¬ 
ceryman, as he took the cat by the neck 
and tossed her out in the back shed into an 
old oyster box full of sawdust, with a part¬ 
ing injunction that if she was going to 
have fits she had better go out where there 
was plenty of fresh air. “Death is always 
a sad thing to contemplate. One day we 
are all full of health, and joy, and cold 
victuls, and the next we are screwed down 
in a box, a few words are said over our re¬ 
mains, a few tears are shed, and there is 
a race to see who shall get back from the 
cemetery first, and though we may think 
we are an important factor in the world’s 
progress, and sometimes feel as though it 
would be unable to put up margins and 
have to stop the deal, the world goes right 
along and it must annoy people who die to 
realize that they don't count for game. 
The greatest man in the world is only a 
nine-spot when he is dead, because some¬ 
body else takes the tricks the dead man 
ought to have taken. But, say, who is 
dead at your house?” 
“Our rooster. Take care, don’t you hit 
me with that canvassed ham,” said the boy 
as the groceryman looked mad to learn 
that there was nobody dead but a rooster, 
when he had preached such a sermon on 
the subject. “Yes, how soon are we for¬ 
gotten when we are gone. Now, you would 
have thought that rooster’s hen would have 
remained faithful to him for a week at 
least. I have watched them all the spring, 
and I never saw a more perfect picture of 
devotion than that between the bantam 
rooster and his hen. They were constantly 
together, and there was nothing too good 
for her. He would dig up angle worms 
and call her, and when she came up on a 
gallop and saw the great big worm on the 
ground, she would look so proud of her 
rooster, and he would straighten up and 
look as though he was saying to her, ‘I’m 
a daisy, and then she would look at him 
as if she would like to bite him, and just as 
she was going to pick up the worm, he 
would snatch it and swallow it himself, 
and chuckle and w T alk around and be full 
of business, as though wondering why she 
didn’t take the worm after he had dug it 
for her, and then the hen wrnuld look disap- 
pointed at first, and then she would look 
resigned, as much as to say: ‘Worms are 
too rich for my blood anyway, and the 
poor dear rooster needs them more than 
I do, because he has to do all the crowing,’ 
and she would go off and find a grasshopper 
and eat it on the sly for fear he would see 
her and complain because she didn’t divide. 
O, I have never seen anything that seemed 
to me so human as the relations between 
that rooster and hen. 
But the exposure told on him, and he 
went into a decline, and one morning we 
found him dead. Do you know I never 
see a hen that seemed to realize a calamity 
as she did. She looked pale, and her eyes 
looked red, and she seemed utterly crushed. 
If the chickens, which were so young they 
could not realize that they were little or¬ 
phans, became noisy, and got to pulling 
and hauling over a worm, and conducted 
themselves in an unseemly manner, she 
would talk to them in hen language, with 
tears in her eyes, and it was a picture of 
woe. But the next day a neighboring 
rooster got to looking through the fence 
from the alley, and trying to flirt with her. 
At first she was indignant, and seemed to 
tell him he ought to go about his business, 
and leave her alone, but the dude kept 
clucking, and soon the widowed hen edged 
up toward the fence, and asked him to 
