The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy: Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
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The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy: Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883
Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
American wit and humor; Boys -- Fiction; Practical jokes -- Fiction
“Oh, no, it was nothing of that kind. You know Pa thinks he is smart. He
thinks because he is forty-eight years old he knows it all; but it
don't seem to me as though a man of his age, that had sense, would let
a tailor palm off on him a pair of pants so tight that he would have to
use a button-hook to button them; but they can catch him on everything,
just as though he was a kid smoking cigarettes. Well, you know Pa drinks
some. That night the new club opened he came home pretty fruitful, and
next morning his head ached so he said he would buy me a dog if I would
go down town and get a bottle of pollynurious water for him. You know
that dye house on Grand avenue, where they have got the four white spitz
dogs. When I went after the penurious water, I noticed they had been
coloring their dogs with the dye stuff, and I put up a job with the dye
man's little boy to help me play it on Pa. They had one dog dyed pink,
another blue, another red, and another green, and I told the boy I would
treat him to ice cream if he would let one out at a time, when I came
down with Pa, and call him in and let another out, and when we started
to go away, to let them all out. What I wanted to do was to paralyze Pa,
and make him think he had got 'em, got dogs the worst way. So, about ten
o'clock when his head got cleared off, and his stomach got settled, he
changed ends with his cuffs, and we came down town, and I told him I
knew where he could get a splendid white spitz dog for me, for five
dollars; and if he would get it, I would never do anything disrespectful
again, and would just sit up nights to please him, and help him up
stairs and get seltzer for him. So we went by the dye house, and just as
I told him I didn't want anything but a white dog, the door opened, and
the pink dog came out and barked at us, and I said 'that's him' and the
boy called him back. Pa looked as though he had the colic, and his eyes
stuck out, and he said 'Hennery, that is a pink dog?' and I said 'no, it
is a white dog, Pa,' and just then the green dog came out, and I asked
Pa if it wasn't a pretty white dog, and and he turned pale and said
'hell, boy, that is a green dog--what's got into the dogs?' I told him
he must be color blind, and was feeling in my pocket for a strap to tie
the dog, and telling him he must be careful of his health or he would
see something worse than green dogs, when the green dog went in, and the
blue dog came rushing out and barked at Pa. Well, Pa leaned against a
tree box, and his eyes stuck out like stops on an organ, and the sweat
was all over his face in drops as big as kernels of hominy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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