ter talk to Pa, but Pa talked
Bible, about taking a little wine for the stomach's sake, and gave
illustrations about Noah getting full, so the minister couldn't brace
him up, and then Ma had some of the sisters come and talk to him, but
he broke them all up by talking about what an appetite they had for
champagne punch when they were out in camp last summer, and they
couldn't have any affect on him, and so Ma said she guessed I would have
to exercise my ingenuity on Pa again. Ma has an idea that I have got
some sense yet, so I told her that if she would do just as I said, me
and my chum would scare Pa so he would swear off. She said she would,
and we went to work. First I took Pa's spectacles down to an optician,
Saturday night, and had the glasses taken out and a pair put in their
place that would magnify, and I took them home and put them in Pa's
spectacle case. Then I got a suit of clothes from my chum's uncle's
trunk, about half the size of Pa's clothes. My chum's uncle is a very
small man, and Pa is corpulent. I got a plug hat three sizes smaller
than Pa's hat, and the name out of Pa's hat and put it in the small hat.
I got a shirt about half big enough for Pa, and put his initials on
the thing under the bosom, and got a number fourteen collar. Pa wears
seventeen. Pa had promised to brace up and go to church Sunday morning,
and Ma put these small clothes where Pa could put them on. I told Ma,
when Pa woke up, to tell him he looked awfully bloated, and excite his
curiosity, and then send for me."

"You didn't play such a trick as that on a poor old man, did you?" said
the grocery man, as a smile came over his face.

"You bet. Desperate diseases require desperate remedies. Well, Ma told
Pa he looked awfully bloated, and that his dissipation was killing him,
as well as all the rest of the family. Pa said he guessed he wasn't
bloated very much, but he got up and put on his spectacles and looked at
himself in the glass. You'd a dide to see him look at himself. His face
looked as big as two faces, through the glass, and his nose was a sight.
Pa looked scared, and then he held up his hand and looked at that. His
hand looked like a ham. Just then I came in, and I turned pale, with
some chalk on my face, and I begun to cry, and I said, 'O, Pa, what ails
you? You are so swelled up I hardly knew you.' Pa looked sick to his
stomach, and then he tried to get on his pants. O, my, it was all I
could do to keep from laughing to s