Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa: 1883Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
General
Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa: 1883
Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
American wit and humor; Boys -- Fiction; Practical jokes -- Fiction
“Not exactly, I gave an old lady some gin when she asked for camphor and
water, and she made a show of herself. I thought I would fool her, but
she knew mighty well what it was, and she drank about half a pint of
gin, and got to tipping over bottles and kegs of paint, and when the
drug man came in with his wife, the old woman threw her arms around his
neck and called him her darling, and when he pushed her away, and told
her she was drunk, she picked up a bottle of citrate of magnesia and
pointed it at him, and the cork came out like a pistol, and he thought
he was shot, and his wife fainted away, and the police came and took
the old gin refrigerator away, and then the drug man told me to face the
door, and when I wasn't looking he kicked me four times, and I landed
in the street, and he said if I ever came in sight of the store again
he would kill me dead. That is the way I resigned. I tell you, they will
send for me again. They never can run that store without me.
“I guess they will worry along without you,” said the grocery man. “How
does your Pa take your being fired out? I should think it would brake
him all up.”
“O, I think Pa rather likes it. At first he thought he had a soft snap
with me in the drug store, cause he has got to drinking again, like a
fish, and he has gone back on the church entirely; but after I had put a
few things in his brandy he concluded it was cheaper to buy it, and he
is now patronizing a barrel house down by the river.
“One day I put some Castile soap in a drink of brandy, and Pa leaned
over the back fence more than an hour, with his finger down his throat.
The man that collects the ashes from the alley asked Pa if he had lost
anything, and Pa said he was only 'sugaring off.' I don't know what that
is. When Pa felt better he came in and wanted a little whiskey to
take the taste out of his mouth, and I gave him some, with about a
teaspoonful of pulverized alum in it. Well, sir, you'd a dide. Pa's
mouth and throat was so puckered up that he couldn't talk. I don't think
that drugman will make anything by firing me out, because I shall turn
all the trade that I control to another store. Why, sir, sometimes there
were eight and nine girls in the store all at wonct, on account of my
being there. They came to have me put extracts on their handkerchiefs,
and to eat gum drops--he will lose all that trade now. My girl that went
back on me for the telegraph messenger boy, she came with the rest of
the girls, but she found, that I could be as 'hawty as a dook.' I got
even with her, though. I pretended I wasn't mad, and when she wanted me
to put some perfumery op her handkerchief I said all right, and I put
on a little geranium and white rose, and then I got some tincture of
assafety, and sprinkled it on her dress and cloak when she went out.
That is about the worst smelling stuff that ever was, and I was glad
when she went out and met the telgraph boy on the corner. They went off
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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