ee him pull them pants on. He could
just get his legs in, and when I got a shoe horn and gave it to him, he
was mad. He said it was a mean boy that would give his Pa a shoe horn
to put on his pants with. The pants wouldn't come around Pa into ten
inches, and Pa said he must have eat something that disagreed with him,
and he laid it to watermelon. Ma stuffed her handkerchief in her mouth
to keep from laffing, when she see Pa look at his-self. The legs of the
pants were so tight Pa could hardly breathe, and he turned pale, and
said, 'Hennery, your Pa is a mighty sick man,' and then Ma and me both
laughed, and he said we wanted him to die so we could spend his life
insurance in riotous living."

[Illustration: Hennery, your Pa is a mighty sick man 197]

"But when Pa put on that condensed shirt, Ma she laid down on the lounge
and fairly yelled, and I laughed till my side ached. Pa got it over his
head, and got his hands in the sleeves, and couldn't get it either way,
and he couldn't see us laugh, but he could hear us, and he said, 'It's
darned funny, ain't it, to have a parent swelled up this way. If I bust
you will both be sorry.' Well, Ma took hold of one side of the shirt,
and I took hold of the other, and we pulled it on, and when Pa's head
came up through the collar, his face was blue. Ma told him she was
afraid he would have a stroke of apoplexy before he got his clothes on,
and I guess Pa thought so too. He tried to get the collar on, but it
wouldn't go half way around his neck, and he looked in the glass and
cried, he looked so. He sat down in a chair and panted, he was so out
of breath, and the shirt and pants ripped, and Pa said there was no use
living if he was going to be a rival to a fat woman in the side show.
Just then I put the plug hat on Pa's head, and it was so small it was
going to roll off, when Pa tried to fit it on his head, and then he took
it off and looked inside of it, to see if it was his hat, and when he
found his name in it, he said 'Take it away. My head is all wrong too.'
Then he told me to go for the doctor, mighty quick. I got the doctor and
told him what we were trying to do with Pa, and he said he would finish
the job. So the Doc. came in, and Pa was on the lounge, and when the
Doc. saw him, he said it was lucky he was called just as he was, or we
would have required an undertaker. He put some pounded ice on Pa's head
the first thing, ordered the shirt cut open, and we got the pants off.