r was not carpeted. It had cracks in it, and I fed the Pain-Killer
to the cracks with very good results--no cholera occurred down below.

It was upon one of these occasions that that friendly cat came waving
his tail and supplicating for Pain-Killer--which he got--and then went
into those hysterics which ended with his colliding with all the
furniture in the room and finally going out of the open window and
carrying the flower-pots with him, just in time for my mother to arrive
and look over her glasses in petrified astonishment and say, "What in
the world is the matter with Peter?"

I don't remember what my explanation was, but if it is recorded in that
book it may not be the right one.

Whenever my conduct was of such exaggerated impropriety that my mother's
extemporary punishments were inadequate, she saved the matter up for
Sunday, and made me go to church Sunday night--which was a penalty
sometimes bearable, perhaps, but as a rule it was not, and I avoided it
for the sake of my constitution. She would never believe that I had been
to church until she had applied her test: she made me tell her what the
text was. That was a simple matter, and caused me no trouble. I didn't
have to go to church to get a text. I selected one for myself. This
worked very well until one time when my text and the one furnished by a
neighbor, who had been to church, didn't tally. After that my mother
took other methods. I don't know what they were now.

In those days men and boys wore rather long cloaks in the winter-time.
They were black, and were lined with very bright and showy Scotch
plaids. One winter's night when I was starting to church to square a
crime of some kind committed during the week, I hid my cloak near the
gate and went off and played with the other boys until church was over.
Then I returned home. But in the dark I put the cloak on wrong side out,
entered the room, threw the cloak aside, and then stood the usual
examination. I got along very well until the temperature of the church
was mentioned. My mother said,

"It must have been impossible to keep warm there on such a night."

I didn't see the art of that remark, and was foolish enough to explain
that I wore my cloak all the time that I was in church. She asked if I
kept it on from church home, too. I didn't see the bearing of that
remark. I said that that was what I had done. She said,

"You wore it in church with that red Scotch plaid outside and glaring?
Did