“I wish you would go away from here. I am afraid of you,” said the grocery man. “I would give anything if you Pa or the minister would come in and have a talk with you. Your mind is wandering,” and the grocery man went to the door and looked up and down street to see if somebody wouldn't come in and watch the crazy boy, while he went to breakfast. “O, Pa and the minister can't make a first payment on me. Pa gets mad when I ask questions, and the minister thinks I am past redemption. Pa said yesterday that baldness was caused, in every case, by men's wearing plug hats, and when I asked him where the good Elisha, (whom the boys called 'go up old bald head,' and the bears had a free lunch on them,) got his plug hat, Pa said school was dismissed and I could go. When the minister was telling me about the good Elijah going up through the clouds in a chariot of fire, and I asked the minister what he thought Elijah would have thought if he had met our Sunday school superintendent coming down through the clouds on a bicycle, he put his hand on my head and said my liver was all wrong. Now, I will leave it to you if there was anything wrong about that. Say, do you know what I think is the most beautiful thing in the Bible?” “No I don't,” said the grocery man, “and if you wan't to tell it I will listen just five minutes, and then I am going to shut up the store and go to breakfast. You make me tired.” “Well, I think the finest thing is that story about the prodigal son, where the boy took all the money he could scrape up and went out West to paint the towns red. He spent his money in riotous living, and saw everything that was going on, and got full of benzine, and struck all the gangs of toughs, both male and female, and his stomach went back on him, and he had malaria, and finally he got to be a cow-boy, herding hogs, and had to eat husks that the hogs didn't want, and got pretty low down. Then he thought it was a pretty good scheme to be getting around home, where they had three meals a day, and spring mattresses; and he started home, beating his way on the trains, and he didn't know whether the old man would receive him with open arms or pointed boots; but the old man came down to the depot to meet him, and right there before the passengers, and the conductor and brakemen, he wasn't ashamed of his boy, though he was ragged, and looked as though he had been on the war path; and the old man fell on his neck and wept, and took him home in a hack, and had veal pot pie for dinner. That's what I call sense. A good many men now days would have put the police on the tramp and had him ordered out of town. What, you going to close up the store? Well, I will see you later. I want to talk with you about something that is weighing on my mind,” and the boy got out just in time to save his coat tail from being caught in the door, and when the grocery man came back from breakfast he found a sign in front:--