THE BAD BOY GROWS THOUGHTFUL--WHY IS LETTUCE LIKE A GIRL?-- KING SOLOMON A FOOL--THINK OF ANY SANE MAN HAVING A THOUSAND WIVES--HE WOULD HAVE TO HAVE TWO HOTELS DURING VACATION--300 BLONDES--600 BRUNETTES, ETC--A THOUSAND WIVES TAKING ICE CREAM--I DON'T ENVY SOLOMON HIS THOUSAND. “What you sitting there like a bump on a log for?” asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as the youth had sat on a box for half an hour, with his hands in his pockets, looking at a hole in the floor, until his eyes were set like a dying horse. “What you thinking of, anyway? It seems to me boys set around and think more than they used to when I was a boy,” and the groceryman brushed the wilted lettuce and shook it, and tried to make it stand up stiff and crisp, before he put it out doors; but the contrary lettuce which had been picked the day before, looked so tired that the boy noticed it. “That lettuce reminds me of a girl. Yesterday I was in here when it was new, like the girl going to the picnic, and it was as fresh and proud, and starched up, and kitteny, and full of life, and as sassy as a girl starting out for a picnic. To-day it has got back from the picnic, and, like the girl, the starch is all taken out, and it is limber, and languid, and tired, and can't stand up alone, and it looks as though it wanted to be laid at rest beside the rotten apples in the alley, rather than be set out in front of a store to be sold to honest people, and give them the gangrene of the liver,” and the boy put on a health commissioner air that frightened the grocery man, and he threw the lettuce out the back door. “You never mind about my lettuce,” said the grocery man, “I can attend to my affairs. But now tell me what you were thinking about here all the morning?” “I was thinking what a fool King Solomon was,” said the boy, with the air of one who has made a statement that has got to be argued pretty strong to make it hold water. “Now, lookahere,” said the grocery man in anger, “I have stood it to have you play tricks on me, and have listened to your condemned foolishness without a murmur as long as you have confined yourself to people now living, but when you attack Solomon--the wisest man, the great king--and call him a fool, friendship ceases, and you must get out of this store. Solomon in all his glory, is a friend of mine, and no fool boy is going to abuse him in my presence. Now, you dry up!”