“It was about speaking a piece. When I asked him what I should speak, he told me to learn some speech of some great man, some lawyer or statesman, so I learned one of Bob Ingersoll's speeches. Well, you'd a dide to see the teacher and the school committee, when I started in on Bob Ingersoll's lecture, the one that was in the papers when Bob was here. You see I thought if a newspaper that all the pious folks takes in their families, could publish Ingersoll's speech, it wouldn't do any hurt for a poor little boy, who ain't knee high to a giraffe, to speak it in school, but they made me dry up. The teacher is a republican, and when Ingersoll was speaking around here on politix, the time of the election, the teacher said Bob was the smartest man this country ever produced. I heard him say that in a corcus, when he went bumming around the ward settin' 'em up nights specting to be superintendent of schools. He said Bob Ingersoll just took the cake, and I think it was darn mean in him to go back on Bob and me too, just cause there was no 'lection. The school committee made the teacher stop me, and they asked me if I didn't know any other piece to speak, and I told them I knew one of Beecher's, and they let me go ahead, but it was one of Beecher's new ones where he said he didn't believe in any hell, and afore I got warmed up they said that was enough of that, and I had to wind up on “Mary had a Little Lam.” None of them didn't kick on Mary's Lam and I went through it, and they let me go home. That's about the safest thing a boy can speak in school, now days, either “Mary had a Little Lam,” or “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” That's about up to the average intelleck of the committee. But if a boy tries to branch out as a statesman, they choke him off. Well, I am going down to the river, and I will leave my coat and hat by the wood yard, and get behind the wood, and you steer Pa down there and you will see some tall weeping over them clothes, and maybe Pa will jump in after me, and then I will come out from behind the wood and throw in a board for him to swim ashore on. Good bye. Give my pocket comb to my chum,” and the boy went out and hung up a sign in front of the grocery, as follows: POP CORN THAT THE CAT HAS SLEPT IN, CHEAP FOR POP CORN BALLS FOR SOCIABLES. CHAPTER VII. HIS MA DECEIVES HIM--THE BAD BOY IN SEARCH OF SAFFRON-- “WELL, IT'S A GIRL IF YOU MUST KNOW”--THE BAD BOY IS GRIEVED AT HIS MA'S DECEPTION--“S-H-H TOOTSY GO TO SLEEP”--“BY LOW, BABY”--THAT SETTLED IT WITH THE CAT--A BABY! BAH! IT MAKES ME TIRED. “Give me ten cents worth of saffron, quick,” said the bad boy to the grocery man, as he came in the grocery on a gallop, early one morning, with no collar on and no vest. He looked as though he had been routed out of bed in a hurry and had jumped into his pants and boots, and put on his coat and hat on the run.