ag is still there. But something seems to go wrong. You
see, when we got ready to go to prayer meeting last night. Pa told me to
go up stairs and get him a hankerchief, and to drop a little perfumery
on it, and put it in the tail pocket of his black coat. I did it, but I
guess I got hold of the wrong bottle of fumery. There was a label on the
fumery bottle that said 'Jamaica Rum,' and I thought it was the same as
Bay Rum, and I put on a whole lot. Just afore I put the hankerchief in
Pa's pocket, I noticed a pack of cards on the stand, that Pa used to
play hi lo-jack with Ma evenings when he was so sick he couldn't go down
town, before he got 'ligion, and I wrapped the hankercher around the
pack of cards and put them in his pocket. I don't know what made me do
it, and Pa don't, either, I guess, 'cause he told Ma this morning I was
possessed of a devil. I never owned no devil, but I had a pair of pet
goats onct, and they played hell all around, Pa said. That's what the
devil does, ain't it? Well, I must go home with these melons, or they
won't keep."

"But hold on," says the grocery man as he gave the boy a few rasins with
worms in, that he couldn't sell, to keep him, "what about the prayer
meeting?"

"O, I like to forgot. Well Pa and me went to prayer meeting, and Ma came
along afterwards with a deakin that is mashed on her, I guess, 'cause he
says she is to be pitted for havin' to go through life yoked to such an
old prize ox as Pa. I heard him tell Ma that, when he was helping her
put on her rubber waterprivilege to go home in the rain the night of the
sociable, and she looked at him just as she does at me when she wants me
to go down to the hair foundry after her switch, and said, "O, you dear
brother," and all the way home he kept her waterprivilege on by putting
his arm on the small of her back. Ma asked Pa if he didn't think the
deakin was real kind, and Pa said, "yez, dam kind," but that was afore
he got 'ligion. We sat in a pew, at the prayer meeting, next to Ma and
the deakin, and there was lots of pious folks all round there. After the
preacher had gone to bat, and an old lady had her innings, a praying,
and the singers had got out on first base, Pa was on deck, and the
preacher said they would like to hear from the recent convert, who was
trying to walk in the straight and narrow way, but who found it so hard,
owing to the many crosses he had to bear. Pa knowed it was him that had
to go to bat, and he got up