The grocery man said that when a man had truly been converted his heart was softened, and he was always looking for a chance to do good and be kind to the poor, but if he only had this galvanized religion, this roll plate piety, or whitewashed reformation, he was liable to be a harder citizen than before. “What made your Pa lock you up in the bath-room on bread and water?” he asked. “Well,” says the boy, as he eat a couple of salt pickles out of a jar on the sidewalk, “Pa is not converted enough to hurt him, and I knowed it, and I thought it would be a good joke to try him and see if he was so confounded good, so I got my chum to dress up in a suit of his sister's summer clothes. Well, you wouldn't believe my chum would look so much like a girl. He would fool the oldest inhabitant. You know how fat he is. He had to sell his bicycle to a slim fellow that clerks in a store, cause he didn't want it any more. His neck is just as fat and there are dimples in it, and with a dress low in the neck, and long at the trail he looks as tall as my Ma. He busted one of his sister's slippers getting them on, and her stockings were a good deal too big for him, but he tucked his drawers down in them and tied a suspender around his leg above the knee, and they stayed on all right. Well, he looked killin', I should prevaricate, with his sister's muslin dress on, starched as stiff as a shirt, and her reception hat with a white feather as big as a Newfoundland dog's tail. Pa said he had got to go down town to see some of the old soldiers of his regiment, and I loafed along behind. My chum met Pa on the corner and asked him where the Lake Shore Park was. “She” said she was a stranger from Chicago, that her husband had deserted her and she didn't know but she would jump into the lake. Pa looked in my chum's eye and sized her up, and said it would be a shame to commit suicide, and asked if she didn't want to take a walk, My chum said he should titter, and he took Pa's arm and they walked up to the lake and back. Well, you may talk about joining the church on probation all you please, but they get their arm around a girl all the same. Pa hugged my chum till he says he thought Pa would break his sister's corset all to pieces, and he squeezed my chum's hand till the ring cut right into his finger and he has to wear a piece of court plaster on it. They started for the Court House park, as I told my chum to do, and I went and got Ma. It was about time for the soldiers to go to the exposition for the evening bizness, and I told Ma we could go down and see them go by. Ma just throwed a shawl over her head and we started down through the park. When we got near Pa and my chum I told Ma it was a shame for so many people to be sitting around lally-gagging right before folks, and she said it was disgustin', and then I pointed to my chum who had his head on Pa's bosom, and Pa was patting my chum on the cheek, while he held