he grocery man to the bad boy,
as he came in with a hungry look on his face, and a wild light in his
eye. "I am afraid of you. I wouldn't be surprised to see you go off half
cocked and blow us all up. I think you are a devil. You may have a billy
goat, or a shot gun or a bottle of poison concealed about you. Condemn
you, the police ought to muzzle you. You will kill somebody yet. Here
take a handful of prunes and go off somewhere and enjoy yourself, and
keep away from here," and the grocery man went on sorting potatoes, and
watching the haggard face of the boy. "What ails you anyway?" he added,
as the boy refused the prunes, and seemed to be sick to the stomach.

"O, I am a wreck," said the boy, as he grated his teeth, and looked
wicked. "You see before you a shadow. I have drank of the sweets of
life, and now only the dregs remain. I look back at the happiness of the
past two weeks, during which I have been permitted to gaze into the fond
blue eyes of my loved one, and carry her rubbers to school for her to
wear home when it rained, to hear the sweet words that fell from her
lips as she lovingly told me I was a terror, and as I think it is all
over, and that I shall never again place my arm around her waist, I feel
as if the world had been kicked off its base and was whirling through
space, liable to be knocked into a cocked hat, and I don't care a darn.
My girl has shook me."

"Sho! You don't say so," says the grocery man as he threw a rotten
potato into a basket of good ones that were going to the orphan asylum.
"Well, she showed sense. You would have blown her up, or broken her
neck, or something. But don't feel bad. You will soon find another girl
that will discount her, and you will forget this one."

"Never!" said the the boy, as he nibbled at a piece of codfish that he
had picked off. "I shall never allow my affections to become entwined
about another piece of calico. It unmans me, sir. Henceforth I am a
hater of the whole girl race. From this out I shall harbor revenge in
my heart, and no girl can cross my path and live. I want to grow up to
become a he school ma'am, or a he milliner, or something, where I can.
grind girls into the dust under the heel of a terrible despotism, and
make them sue for mercy. To think that girl, on whom I have lavished my
heart's best love and over thirty cents, in the past two weeks, could
let the smell of a goat on my clothes come between us, and break off, an
acquaintance that