d out. Ma told
him not to drink anything, and he said he wouldn't, but he did. He was
full the third place he went to. O, so full. Some men can get full
and not show it, but when Pa gets full, he gets so full his back teeth
float, and the liquor crowds his eyes out, and his mouth gets loose
and wiggles all over his face, and he laughs all the time, and the
perspiration just oozes out of him, and his face gets red, and he walks
_so_ wide. O, he disgraced us all. At one place he wished the hired girl
a happy new year more than twenty times, and hung his hat on her elbow,
and tried to put on a rubber hall mat for his over shoes. At another
place he walked up a lady's train, and carried away a card basket full
of bananas and oranges. Ma wanted my chum and me to follow Pa and bring
him home, and about dark we found him in the door yard of a house where
they have statues in front of the house, and he grabbed me by the arm,
and mistook me for another caller, and insisted on introducing me to a
marble statue without any clothes on. He said it was a friend of his,
and it was a winter picnic."

[Illustration: Happy New Year Mum p149]

"He hung his hat on an evergreen, and put his overcoat on the iron fence,
and I was so mortified I almost cried. My chum said if his Pa made such
a circus of himself he would sand bag him. That gave me an idea, and
when we got Pa most home I went and got a paper box covered with red
paper, so it looked just like a brick, and a bottle of tomato ketchup,
and when we got Pa up on the steps at home I hit him with the paper
brick, and my chum squirted the ketchup on his head, and we demanded
his money, and then he yelled murder, and we lit out, and Ma and the
minister, who was making a call on her, all the afternoon; they came
to the door and pulled Pa in. He said he had been attacked by a band of
robbers, and they knocked his brains out, but he whipped them, and then
Ma saw the ketchup brains oozing out of his head, and she screamed, and
the minister said, 'Good heavens he is murdered,' and just then I came
in the back door and they sent me after the doctor, and they put him on
the lounge, and tied up his head with a towel to keep the brains in, and
Pa began to snore, and when the doctor came in it took them half an hour
to wake him, and then he was awful sick to his stummick, and then Ma
asked the doctor if he would live, and the doc. analyzed the ketchup
and smelled of it and told Ma he would be all