," and the
boy went on playing "There's a land that is fairer than Day."

"But what was he skipping up street for the other night with his hat
off, grabbing at his coat tails as though they were on fire? I thought I
never saw a pussy man run any faster. And what was the celebration down
on your street about that time? I thought the world was coming to an
end," and the grocery man kept away from the boy, for fear he would
explode.

"O, that was only a Fenian scare. Nothin' serious. You see Pa is a sort
of half Englishman. He claims to be an American citizen, when he wants
office, but when they talk about a draft he claims to be a subject of
Great Brit-tain, and he says they can't touch him. Pa is a darn smart
man, and don't you forget it. There don't any of them get ahead of Pa
much. Well, Pa has said a good deal about the wicked Fenians, and that
they ought to be pulled, and all that, and when I read the story in the
papers about the explosion in the British Parliament Pa was hot. He said
the damnirish was ruining the whole world. He didn't dare say it at the
table or our hired girl would have knocked him silly with a spoonful
of mashed potatoes, 'cause she is a nirish girl, and she can lick any
Englishman in this town. Pa said there ought to have been somebody
thereto have taken that bomb up and throwed it in the sewer before it
exploded. He said that if he ever should see a bomb he would grab it
right up and throw it away where it wouldn't hurt anybody. Pa has me
read the papers to him nights, cause his eyes have got splinters in 'em,
and after I had read all there was in the paper I made up a lot more and
pretended to read it, about how it was rumored that the Fenians here
in Milwaukee were going to place dynamite bombs at every house where an
Englishman lived, and at a given signal blow them all up. Pa looked pale
around the gills, but he said he wasn't scared.

"Pa and Ma were going to call on a she deacon that night, that has lots
of money in the bank, to see if she didn't want to invest in a dead sure
paying silver mine, and me and my chum concluded to give them a
send off. We got my big black injy rubber foot-ball, and painted
'_Dinymight_' in big white letters on it, and tied a piece of tarred
rope to it for a fuse, and got a big fire cracker, one of those old
fourth of July horse scarers, and a basket full of broken glass. We
put the foot-ball in front of the step and lit the tarred rope, and got
under the