Then he gave Pa an emetic, and had his feet soaked, and Pa said, 'Doc.,
if you will bring me out of this I will never drink another drop.'
The Doc. told Pa that his life was not worth a button if he ever drank
again, and left about half a pint of sugar pills to be fired into Pa
every five minutes. Ma and me sat up with Pa all day Sunday, and Monday
morning I changed the spectacles, and took the clothes home, and along
about noon Pa said he felt as though he could get up. Well, you never
see a tickleder man than he was when he found the swelling had gone down
so he could get his pants and shirt on, and he says that doctor is
the best in this town. Ma says I am a smart boy, and Pa has taken the
pledge, and we are all right. Say, you don't think there is anything
wrong in a boy playing it on his Pa once in a while, do you?"

"Not much, You have very likely saved your Pa's life. No, sir, joking is
all right when by so doing you can break a person of a bad habit," and
the grocery man cut a chew of tobacco off a piece of plug that was on
the counter, which the boy had soaked in kerosene, and before he had
fairly got it rolled in his cheek he spit it out and began to gag,
and as the boy started leisurely out the door the grocery man said,
"Lookahere, condemn you, don't you ever tamper with my tobacco again, or
by thunder I'll maul you," and he followed the boy to the door,
spitting cotton all the way; and, as the boy went around the corner, the
groceryman thought how different a joke seemed when it was on somebody
else. And then he turned to go in and rinse the kerosene out of his
mouth, and found a sign on a box of new, green apples, as follows:--

COLIC OR CHOLERA INFANTUM

YOU PAYS YOUR MONEY

AND TAKES YOUR CHOICE.

CHAPTER XXIII.

GHOSTS DON'T STEAL WORMY FIGS--A GRAND REHERSAL--THE
MINISTER MURDERS HAMLET--THE WATER-MELON KNIFE--THE OLD MAN
WANTED TO REHERSE THE DRUNKEN SCENE IN RIP VAN WINKLE--NO
HUGGING ALLOWED--HAMLET WOULDN'T HAVE TWO GHOSTS-"HOW WOULD
YOU LIKE TO BE AN IDIOT."

"I am thy father's ghost," said a sheeted form in the doorway of the
grocery, one evening, and the grocery man got behind the cheese box,
while the ghost continued in a sepulchral voice, "doomed for a certain
time to walk the night," and, waving a chair round, the ghost strode up
to the grocery man, and with the other ghos