sat on the right of Pa, and when he wasn't
looking I pulled the table cloth so the saucer of red hot maple syrup
dropped off in his lap."

[Illustration: Maple syrup for one 042]

"Well, you'd a dide to see how quick his thoughts turned from his
financial troubles to his physical misfortunes. There was about a pint
of hot syrup, and it went all over his lap, and you know how hot melted
maple sugar is, and how it sort of clings to anything. Pa jumped up and
grabbed hold of his pants legs to pull them away from hisself, and he
danced around and told Ma to turn the hose on him, and then he took
a pitcher of ice water and poured it down his pants, and he said the
condemned old table was getting so ricketty that a saucer wouldn't stay
on it, and I told Pa if he would put some tar on his legs, the same kind
that he told me to put on my lip to make my moustache grow, the syrup
wouldn't burn so; and then he cuffed me, and I think he felt better It
is a great thing to get a man's mind off of his troubles, but where a
man hasn't got any mind like you, for instance--"

At this point the grocery man picked up a fire poker, and the boy went
out in a hurry and hung up a sign in front of the grocery:

CASH PAID

FOR FAT DOGS.

CHAPTER V.

HIS PA AND DYNAMITE--THE OLD MAN SELLING SILVER STOCK--
FENIAN SCARE--"DYNAMITE" IN MILWAUKEE--THE FENIAN BOOM--
"GREAT GOD HANNER WE ARE BLOWED UP!"--HIS MA HAS LOTS OF
SAND--THE OLD MAN USELESS IN TROUBLE. THE DOG AND THE FALSE
TEETH.

"I guess your Pa's losses in the silver mine have made him crazy,
haven't they?" said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the
store with his eye winkers singed off, and powder marks on his face, and
began to play on the harmonica, as he sat down on the end of a stick of
stove wood, and balanced himself.

"O, I guess not. He has hedged. He got in with a deacon of another
church, and sold some of his stock to him, and Pa says if I will keep my
condemn mouth shut he will unload the whole of it, if the churches hold
out. He goes to a new church every night there is prayer meeting or
anything, and makes Ma go with him, to give him tone; and after meeting
she talks with the sisters about how to piece a silk bed quilt, while
Pa gets in his work selling silver stock. I don't know but he will order
some more stock from the factory, if he sells all he has got