"What is it, reform school, or have the police ordered you
out of town? I have felt it coming for a long time. This is the only
town you could have plied your vocation so long in and not been pulled.
Where are you going with the dude suit case and the hat box?"

"Oh, dad has got a whole mess more diseases, and the doctors had a
conversation over him Sunday, and they say he has got to go away again,
right now, and that a sea voyage will brace him up and empty him out so
medicine over in Europe can get in its work and strengthen him so he can
start back after a while and probably die on the way home, and be buried
at sea. Dad says he will go, for he had rather die at sea than on land,
'cause they don't have to have any trouble about a funeral, 'cause all
they do is to sew a man up in a piece of cloth, tie a sack of coal to
his feet, slide him off a board, and he goes kerplunk down into the salt
water about a mile, and stands there on his feet and makes the whales
and sharks think he is a new kind of fish."

"Gee! but that is a programme that appeals to me as sort of uncanny,"
said the old man. "Is your dad despondent over the outlook? What new
disease has he got?"

[Illustration: Pasted a tomato can label on the suitcase 31]

"All of 'em," said the boy, as he took a label off a tomato can and
pasted it on the end of the suit case. "You take an almanac and read
about all the diseases that the medicine advertised in the almanac
cures, and dad has got the whole lot of them, nervous prostration,
rheumatism, liver trouble, stomach busted, lungs congested, diaphragm
turned over, heart disease, bronchitis, corns, bunions, every darn thing
a man can catch without costing him anything. But he is not despondent.
He just thinks it is an evidence of genius, and a certificate of
standing in society and wealth. He argues that the poor people who have
only one disease are not in it with statesmen and scholars. Oh, he is
all right. He thinks if he goes to Europe all knocked out, he will class
with emperors and dukes. Oh, since he had that operation and had his
appendix chopped out, he thinks there is a bond of sympathy between him
and King Edward that will cause him to be invited to be the guest of
royalty. He is just daffy," and the bad boy took a sapolio label out of
a box and pasted it on the other end of the valise.

"What in thunder and lightning are you pasting those labels on your
valise for?" said the old man, as the boy rea