Pa said he would go home and
behave. He was offul mad, and he went home and we looked through the
alley fence and saw Pa trying to wash off the blacking. You see that
blacking won't wash off. You have to wear it off. Pa would wash his face
with soap suds, and then look in the glass, and he was blacker everytime
he washed, and when Ma laffed at him he said the offulest words,
something like 'sweet spirit hear my prayer,' then he washed himself
again. I am going to leave my burnt cork on, cause if I washed it off
Pa would know there had been some smouging somewhere. I asked the shoe
store man how long it would take the blacking to wear off, and he said
it ought to wear off in a week. I guess Pa won't go out doors much,
unless it is in the night. I am going to get him to let me go off in the
country fishing, till mine wears off, and when I get out of town I will
wash up. Say, you don't think a little blacking hurts a man's complexion
do you, and you don't think a man ought to get mad because it won't wash
off, do you?"

"O, probably it don't hurt the complexion," said the grocery man, as he
sprinkled some fresh water on the wilted lettuce, so it would look fresh
while the hired girl was buying some, "and yet it is mighty unpleasant,
where a man has got an engagement to go to a card party, as I know your
Pa has to-night. As to getting mad about it, if I was your Pa I would
take a barrel stave and shatter your castle scandalous. What kind of a
fate do you think awaits you when you die, anyway?"

"Well, I am mixed on the fate that awaits me when I die. If I should go
off sudden, with all my sins on my head, and this burnt cork on my face,
I should probably be a neighbor to you, way down below, and they would
give me a job as fireman, and I should feel bad for you every time I
chucked in a nuther chunk of brimstone, and thought of you trying to
swim dog fashion in the lake of fire, and straining your eyes to find an
iceberg that you could crawl up on to cool your parched hind legs. If I
don't die slow so I will have time to repent, and be saved, I shall be
toasted brown. That's what the minister says, and they wouldn't pay him
two thousand dollars a year and give him a vacation to tell anything
that was not so. I tell you it is painful to think of that place that
so many pretty fair average people here are going to when they die. Just
think of it, a man that swears just once, if he don't hedge, and take it
back will go to the