eath, Carleton
began to tell her that Brig had been lying to her, that his clams were
made of India rubber, and that she could never digest them in the wide
world, and he wound up by telling her that she could have his clams at ten
per cent discount for cash. By this time she was about as mad as she could
be, and she pitched into both of them, looking cross, and sung like
blazes, went away up the musical ladder to zero, and wound up by telling
them both, to their face, that she would see them in Chicago before she
would buy a condemned clam. And then they all went off the stage as though
they had been having a regular fight, and Brignoli acted as though he
would like to eat her raw. That's the way it seemed to us, but we are no
musician.

PECK'S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

HIS PA GOES SKATING.

"What is that stuff on your shirt bosom, that looks like soap grease?"
said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came into the grocery the
morning after Christmas.

The boy looked at his shirt front, put his finger on the stuff and smelled
of his fingers, and then said, "O, that is nothing but a little of the
turkey dressing and gravy. You see after Pa and I got back from the roller
skating rink yesterday, Pa was all broke up and he couldn't carve the
turkey, and I had to do it, and Pa sat in a stuffed chair with his head
tied up, and a pillow amongst his legs, and he kept complaining that I
didn't do it right. Gol darn a turkey any way. I should think they would
make a turkey flat on the back, so he would lay on a greasy platter
without skating all around the table. It looks easy to see Pa carve a
turkey, but when I speared into the bosom of that turkey, and began to saw
on it, the turkey rolled around as though it was on castors, and it was
all I could do to keep it out of Ma's lap. But I rasseled with it till I
got off enough white meat for Pa and Ma and dark meat enough for me, and I
dug out the dressing, but most of it flew into my shirt bosom, cause the
string that tied up the place where the dressing was concealed about the
person of the turkey, broke prematurely, and one oyster hit Pa in the eye,
and he said I was as awkward as a cross-eyed girl trying to kiss a man
with a hair lip. If I ever get to be the head of a family I shall carve
turkeys with a corn sheller.

"But what broke your Pa up at the roller skating rink?" asked the grocery
man.

"O, everything broke him up. He is split up so Ma buttons the top of his