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
“Pa held one side of the hymn book and Ma held the other, and Pa he
always sings for all that is out, and when he braced himself and sang
“Just as I am,” Ma thought Pa's voice was tinctured a little with
biliousness and she looked at him, and hunched him and told him to stop
singing and breathe through his nose, cause his breath was enough to
stop a clock. Pa stopped singing and turned around kind of cross towards
Ma, and then he smelled Ma's cheese, and He turned his head the other
way and said, 'whew,' and they didn't sing any more, but they looked at
each other as though they smelled frowy. When they sat down they sat as
far apart as they could get, and Pa sat next to a woman who used to be a
nurse in a hospital, and when she smelled Pa's cheese she looked at
him as though she thought he had the small pox, and she held her
handkerchief to her nose. The man in the other end of the pew, that Ma
sat near, he was a stranger from Racine, who belongs to our church, and
he looked at Ma sort of queer, and after the minister prayed, and they
got up to sing again, the man took his hat and went out, and when he
came by me he said something in a whisper about a female glue factory.
“Well, sir, before the sermon was over everybody in that part of the
church had their handkerchiefs to their noses, and they looked at Pa and
Ma scandalous, and the two ushers they come around in the pews looking
for a dog, and when the minister got over his sermon, and wiped the
perspiration off his face, he said he would like to have the trustees of
the church stay after meeting, as there was some business of importance
to transact. He said the question of proper ventilation and sewerage for
the church would be brought up, and that he presumed the congregation
had noticed this morning that the church was unusually full of sewer
gas. He said he had spoken of the matter before, and expected it would
be attended to before this. He said he was a meek and humble follower of
the lamb, and was willing to cast his lot wherever the Master decided,
but he would be blessed if he would preach any longer in a church that
smelled like a bone boiling establishment. He said religion was a good
thing, but no person could enjoy religion as well in a fat rending
establishment as he could in a flower garden, and as far as he was
concerned he had got enough. Everybody looked at everybody else, and
Pa looked at Ma as though he knew where the sewer gas came from, and Ma
looked at Pa real mad, and me and my chum lit out, and I went home and
distributed my cheese all around. I put a slice in Ma's bureau drawer,
down under her underclothes, and a piece in the spare room, under the
bed, and a piece in the bath-room, in the soap dish, and a slice in the
album on the parlor table, and a piece in the library in a book, and
I went to the dining room and put some under the table, and dropped a
piece under the range in the kitchen. I tell you the house was loaded
for bear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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