Ingersoll just took the cake, and I think it was darn mean
in him to go back on Bob and me too, just cause there was no 'lection.
The school committee made the teacher stop me, and they asked me if
I didn't know any other piece to speak, and I told them I knew one of
Beecher's, and they let me go ahead, but it was one of Beecher's new
ones where he said he didn't believe in any hell, and afore I got warmed
up they said that was enough of that, and I had to wind up on "Mary had
a Little Lam." None of them didn't kick on Mary's Lam and I went through
it, and they let me go home. That's about the safest thing a boy can
speak in school, now days, either "Mary had a Little Lam," or "Twinkle,
Twinkle Little Star." That's about up to the average intelleck of the
committee. But if a boy tries to branch out as a statesman, they choke
him off. Well, I am going down to the river, and I will leave my coat
and hat by the wood yard, and get behind the wood, and you steer Pa down
there and you will see some tall weeping over them clothes, and maybe Pa
will jump in after me, and then I will come out from behind the wood
and throw in a board for him to swim ashore on. Good bye. Give my pocket
comb to my chum," and the boy went out and hung up a sign in front of
the grocery, as follows:

POP CORN THAT THE CAT

HAS SLEPT IN, CHEAP FOR

POP CORN BALLS FOR SOCIABLES.

CHAPTER VII.

HIS MA DECEIVES HIM--THE BAD BOY IN SEARCH OF SAFFRON--
"WELL, IT'S A GIRL IF YOU MUST KNOW"--THE BAD BOY IS GRIEVED
AT HIS MA'S DECEPTION--"S-H-H TOOTSY GO TO SLEEP"--"BY LOW,
BABY"--THAT SETTLED IT WITH THE CAT--A BABY! BAH! IT MAKES
ME TIRED.

"Give me ten cents worth of saffron, quick," said the bad boy to the
grocery man, as he came in the grocery on a gallop, early one morning,
with no collar on and no vest. He looked as though he had been routed
out of bed in a hurry and had jumped into his pants and boots, and put
on his coat and hat on the run.

"I don't keep saffron," said the grocery man as he picked up a barrel of
ax-handles the boy had tipped over in his hurry. "You want to go over to
the drug store on the corner, if you want saffron. But what on earth is
the mat--"

At this point the boy shot out of the door, tipping over a basket of
white beans, and disappeared in the drug store. The grocery man got down
on his knees o