Say, do you believe that story about Joner being in the whale's belly, all
night? I don't. The minister was telling about it at Sunday school last
Sunday, and asked me what I thought Joner was doing while he was in there,
and I told him I interpreted the story this way, that the whale was fixed
up inside with upper and lower berths, like a sleeping car, and Joner had
a lower berth, and the porter made up the berth as soon as Joner came in
with his satchel, and Joner pulled off his boots and gave them to the
porter to black, and put his watch under the pillow and turned in. The
boys in Sunday school all laffed, and the minister said I was a bigger
fool than Pa was, and that was useless. If you go back on me, now, I won't
have a friend, except my chum and a dog, and I swear, by my halidom, that
I never put no sand in your sugar, or kerosene in your butter. I admit the
picking off of the codfish, but you can charge it to Pa, the same as you
did the eggs that I pushed my chum over into last summer, though I thought
you did wrong in charging Christmas prices for dog days eggs. When my
chum's Ma scraped his pants she said there was not an egg represented on
there that was less than two years old. The Sunday school folks
have all gone back on me, since I put kyan pepper on the stove, when they
were singing 'Little Drops of Water,' and they all had to go out doors and
air themselves, but I didn't mean to let the pepper drop on the stove. I
was just holding it over the stove to warm it, when my chum hit the funny
bone of my elbow. Pa says I am a terror to cats. Every time Pa says
anything, it gives me a new idea. I tell you Pa has got a great brain, but
sometimes he don't have it with him. When he said I was a terror to cats I
thought what fun there is in cats, and me and my chum went to stealing
cats right off, and before night we had eleven cats caged. We had one in a
canary bird cage, three in Pa's old hat boxes, three in Ma's band box,
four in valises, two in a trunk, and the rest in a closet up stairs.

"That night Pa said he wanted me to stay home because the committee that
is going to get up a noyster supper in the church was going to meet at our
house, and they might want to send me on errands. I asked him if my chum
couldn't stay too, 'cause he is the healthiest infant to run after errands
that ever was, and Pa said he could stay, but we must remember that there
musn't be no monkey business going on. I told him there shoul