“Not much, You have very likely saved your Pa's life. No, sir, joking is all right when by so doing you can break a person of a bad habit,” and the grocery man cut a chew of tobacco off a piece of plug that was on the counter, which the boy had soaked in kerosene, and before he had fairly got it rolled in his cheek he spit it out and began to gag, and as the boy started leisurely out the door the grocery man said, “Lookahere, condemn you, don't you ever tamper with my tobacco again, or by thunder I'll maul you,” and he followed the boy to the door, spitting cotton all the way; and, as the boy went around the corner, the groceryman thought how different a joke seemed when it was on somebody else. And then he turned to go in and rinse the kerosene out of his mouth, and found a sign on a box of new, green apples, as follows:-- COLIC OR CHOLERA INFANTUM YOU PAYS YOUR MONEY AND TAKES YOUR CHOICE. CHAPTER XXIII. GHOSTS DON'T STEAL WORMY FIGS--A GRAND REHERSAL--THE MINISTER MURDERS HAMLET--THE WATER-MELON KNIFE--THE OLD MAN WANTED TO REHERSE THE DRUNKEN SCENE IN RIP VAN WINKLE--NO HUGGING ALLOWED--HAMLET WOULDN'T HAVE TWO GHOSTS-“HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE AN IDIOT.” “I am thy father's ghost,” said a sheeted form in the doorway of the grocery, one evening, and the grocery man got behind the cheese box, while the ghost continued in a sepulchral voice, “doomed for a certain time to walk the night,” and, waving a chair round, the ghost strode up to the grocery man, and with the other ghostly hand reached into a box of figs. “No you ain't no ghost,” said the grocery man, recognizing the bad boy. “Ghosts do not go prowling around groceries stealing wormy figs. What do you mean by this sinful masquerade business? My father never had no ghost!” “O, we have struck it now,” said the bad boy as he pulled off his mask and rolled up the sheet he had worn around him. “We are going to have amateur theatricals, to raise money to have the church carpeted, and I am going to boss the job.” “You don't say,” answered the grocery man, as he thought how much he could sell to the church people for a strawberry and ice cream festival, and how little he could sell for amateur theatricals. “Who is going into it and what are you going to play?”