e failing,
and made up his mind to demonstrate to the old man that he was rapidly
getting off his base.. The old person is very fond of macaroni, and eats
it about three times a week. The other day the boy was in a drug store
and noticed in a show case a lot of small rubber hose, about the size of
sticks of macaroni, such as is used on nursing bottles, and other rubber
utensils. It was white and nice, and the boy's mind was made up at once.
He bought a yard of it, and took it home. When the macaroni was cooked
and ready to be served, he hired the table girl to help him play it
on the old man. They took a pair of shears and cut the rubber hose in
pieces about the same length as the pieces of boiled macaroni, and
put them in a saucer with a little macaroni over the rubber pipes, and
placed the dish at the old man's plate. Well, we suppose if ten thousand
people could have had reserved seats and seen the old man struggle with
the India rubber macaroni, and have seen the boy's struggle to keep
from laughing, they would have had more fun than they would at a circus,
First the old delegate attempted to cut the macaroni into small pieces,
and failing, he remarked that it was not cooked enough. The boy said his
macaroni was cooked too tender, and that his father's teeth were so poor
that he would have to eat soup entirely pretty soon. The old man said,
"Never you mind my teeth, young man," and decided that he would not
complain of anything again. He took up a couple of pieces of rubber and
one piece of macaroni on a fork and put them in his mouth. The macaroni
dissolved easy enough, and went down perfectly easy, but the flat
macaroni was too much for him. He chewed on it for a minute or two, and
talked about the weather in order that none of the family should see
that he was in trouble, and when he found the macaroni would not down,
he called their attention to something out of the window and took the
rubber slyly from his mouth, and laid it under the edge of his plate. He
was more than half convinced that his teeth were played out, but went on
eating something else for a while, and finally he thought he would just
chance the macaroni once more for luck, and he mowed away another fork
full in his mouth. It was the same old story. He chewed like a seminary
girl chewing gum, and his eyes stuck out and his face became red, and
his wife looked at him as though afraid he was going to die of apoplexy,
and finally the servant girl burst