muscle about as big is an oyster.
"That is the result of training at the gymnasium. Before I took lessons
I hadn't any more muscle than you have got. Well, the dutchman was going
to a dance on the south side the other night, and he asked my chum to
tend the gymnasium, and I told Pa if he would join the Good Templars
that night there wouldn't be many at the lodge, and he wouldn't be so
embarrassed, and as I was one of the officers of the lodge I would put
it to him light, and he said he would go, so my chum got five other boys
to help us put him through. So we steered him down to the gymnasium, and
made him rap on the storm door outside, and I said who comes there, and
he said it was a pilgrim who wanted to jine our sublime order. I asked
him if he had made up his mind to turn from the ways of a hyena, and
adopt the customs of the truly good, and he said if he knew his own
heart he had, and then I told him to come in out of the snow and take
off his pants. He kicked a little at taking off his pants, because it
was cold out there in the storm door dog house, but I told him they all
had to do it. The princes, potentates and paupers all had to come to
it. He asked me how it was when we initiated women, and I told him women
never took that degree. He pulled of his pants, and wanted a check for
them, but I told him the Grand Mogul would hold his clothes, and then I
blind-folded him, and with a base ball club I pounded on the floor as I
walked around the gymnasium, while the lodge, headed by my chum, sung,
'We wont go home till morning.' I stopped in front of the ice-water tank
and said 'Grand Worthy Duke, I bring before you a pilgrim who has drank
of the dregs until his stomach won't hold water, and who desires
to swear off.' The Grand Mogul asked me if he was worthy and well
qualified, and I told him that he had been drunk more or less since the
reunion last summer, which ought to qualify him. Then the Grand Mogul
made Pa repeat the most blood-curdling oath, in which Pa agreed, if he
ever drank another drop, to allow anybody to pull his toe-nails out with
tweezers, to have his liver dug out and fed to dogs, his head chopped
off, and his eyes removed. Then the Mogul said he would brand the
candidate on the bare back with the initial letters of our order, 'G.
T.,' that all might read how a brand had been snatched from the burning.
You'd a dide to see Pa flinch when I pulled up his shirt, and got ready
to brand him.

"My chum g