times
when I am down town with him to have him go into a store where there are
girl clerks and ask what things are for, that I know he don't want, and
make the girls blush, but he is a good hearted old man, and he and
me are going to make a mint of money during vacation. He lives near a
summer resort hotel, and has a stream that is full of minnows, and we
are going to catch minnows and sell them to the dudes for fish bait. He
says some of the fools will pay ten cents apiece for minnows, so if we
sell a million minnows, we make a fortune. I am coming back in September
and will buy out your grocery. Say, let me have a pound of raisins, and
I'll pay you when I sell my uncle's minnows."

CHAPTER XVII.

HE DISCUSSES THEOLOGY. MEDITATIONS ON NOAH'S ARK--THE GARDEN
OF EDEN--THE ANCIENT DUDE--ADAM WITH A PLUG HAT ON--"I'M A
THINKER PROM THINKERSVILLE"--THE APOSTLES IN A PATROL WAGON--
ELIJAH AND ELISHA--THE PRODIGAL SON--A VEAL POT PIE FOR
DINNER.

"What you sitting there for half an hour for, staring at vacancy?" said
the grocery man to the bad boy, as he sat on a stool by the stove one
of these foggy mornings, when everybody feels like quarreling, with
his fingers clasped around his knee, looking as though he did not know
enough to last him to bed. "What you thinking about anyway?"

"I was wondering where you would have been today if Noah had run his ark
into such a fog as this, and there had been no fog-horn on Mount Ararat,
and he had passed by with his excursion and not made a landing, and had
floated around on the freshet until all the animals starved, and the ark
had struck a snag and burst a hole in their bottom. I tell you, we can
all congratulate ourselves that Noah happened to blunder on that high
ground. If that ark had been lost, either by being foundered, or being
blowed up by Fenians because Noah was an Englishman, it would have been
cold work trying to populate this world. In that case another Adam and
Eve would have to be made out of dirt and water, and they might have
gone wrong again and failed to raise a family, and where would we have
been? I tell you, when I think of the narrow escapes we have had, it is
a wonder to me that we have got along as well as we have."

"Well, when did you get out of the asylum?" said the grocery man, who
had been standing back with his mouth open looking at the boy as though
he was crazy. "What you want is to have your head soaked. You are
ge