reamy life of ease on the farm, and been shaking ever since. Darn
a farm anyway."

"What, you haven't been to work for the deacon any more, have you? I
thought you sent in your resignation;" and the grocery man offered the
boy some limberger cheese to strengthen him.

"O, take that cheese away," said the boy, as he turned pale and gagged.
"You don't know what a sick person needs any more than a professional
nurse. What I want is to be petted. You see I went out to the farm with
my chum, and I took the fish-poles and remained in the woods while he
drove the horse to the deacon's; and he gave the deacon my resignation,
and the deacon wouldn't accept it. He said he would hold my resignation
until after harvest, and then act on it. He said he could put me in jail
for breach of promise, if I quit work and left him without giving proper
notice; and my chum came and told me, and so I concluded to go to work
rather than have any trouble, and the deacon said my chum could work a
few days for his board if he wanted to. It was pretty darn poor board
for a boy to work for, but my chum wanted to be with me, so he stayed.
Pa and Ma came out to the farm to stay a day or two to help. Pa was
going to help harvest, and Ma was going to help the deacon's wife, but
Pa wanted to carry the jug to the field, and lay under a tree while the
rest of us worked, and Ma just talked the arm off the deacon's wife. The
deacon and Pa laid in the shade and see my chum and me work, and Ma and
the deacon's wife gossipped so they forgot to get dinner, and my chum
and me organized a strike, but we were beaten by monopoly. Pa took me by
the neck and thrashed out a shock of wheat with my heels, and the deacon
took my chum and sat down on him, and we begged and they gave us our old
situations back. But we got even with them that night. I tell you, when
a boy tries to be good, and quit playing jokes on people, and then has
everybody down on him, and has his Pa hire him out on a farm to work for
a deacon that hasn't got any soul except when he is in church, and a boy
has to get up in the night to get breakfast and go to work, and has to
work until late at night, and they kick because he wants to put butter
on his pancakes, and feed him skim milk and rusty fat pork, it makes him
tough, and he would play a joke on his aged grandmother. After my chum
and me had got all the chores done that night, we sat out on a fence
back of the house in the orchard, eating green a