“O, it was on account of St. Patrick's Day,” said the bad boy as he bit off half a pound of maple sugar, and dried his tears. “You see, Pa never sees Ma buy a new silk handkerchief, but he wants it. Tother day Ma got one of these orange-colored handkerchiefs, and Pa immediately had a sore throat and wanted to wear it, and Ma let him put it on. I thought I would break him of taking everything nice that Ma got, so when he went down town with the orange handkerchief on his neck, I told some of the St. Patrick boys in the Third ward, who had green ribbons on, that the old duffer that was putting on style was an orange-man, and he said he could whip any St. Patrick's Day man in town. The fellers laid for Pa, and when he came along one of them threw a barrel at Pa, and another pulled the yellow handkerchief off his neck, and they all yelled 'hang him,' and one grabbed a rope that was on the sidewalk where they were moving a building, and Pa got up and dusted. You'd a dide to see Pa run. He met a policeman and said more'n a hundred men had tried to murder him, and they had mauled him and stolen his yellow handkerchief. The policeman told Pa his life was not safe, and he better go home and lock himself in, and he did, and I was telling Ma about how I got the boys to scare Pa, and he heard it, and he told me that settled it. He said I had caused him to run more foot races than any champion pedestrian, and had made his life unbearable, and now I must go it alone. Now I want you to send a couple of pounds of crackers over to the house, and have your boy tell the hired girl that I have gone down to the river to drown myself, and she will tell Ma, and Ma will tell Pa, and pretty soon you will see a bald headed pussy man whooping it up towards the river with a rope. They may think at times that I am a little tough, but when it comes to parting forever, they weaken. “Well, the teacher at school says you are a hardened infidel,” said the grocery man, as he charged the crackers to the boy's Pa. “He says he had to turn you out to keep you from ruining the morals of the other scholars. How was that?”