LPEL!--"NO
MORE WHISKY FOR YOU."

"I understand your Pa has got to drinking again like a fish," says the
grocery man to the bad boy, as the youth came in the grocery and took
a handful of dried apples. The boy ate a dried apple and then made up
a terrible face, and the grocery man asked him what he was trying to do
with his face. The boy caught his breath and then said:

"Say, don't you know any better than to keep dried apples where a boy
can get hold of them when he has got the mumps? You will kill some boy
yet by such dum carelessness. I thought these were sweet dried apples,
but they are sour as a boarding house keeper, and they make me tired.
Didn't you ever have the mumps? Gosh, but don't it hurt though? You
have got to be darn careful when you have the mumps, and not go out
bob-sledding, or skating, or you will have your neck swell up biggern a
milk pail. Pa says he had the mumps once when he was a boy and it broke
him all up.

"Well, never mind the mumps, how about your Pa spreeing it. Try one of
those pickles in the jar there, wont you. I always like to have a boy
enjoy himself when he comes to see me," said the grocery man, winking to
a man who was filling and old fashioned tin box with tobacco out of the
pail, who winked back as much as to say, "if that boy eats a pickle on
top of them mumps we will have a circus, sure."

"You can't play no pickle on me, not when I have the mumps. Ma passed
the pickles to me this morning, and I took one mouthful, and like to had
the lockjaw. But Ma didn't do it on purpose, I guess. She never had the
mumps and didn't know how discouraging a pickle is. Darn if I didn't
feel as though I had been struck in the butt of the ear with a brick.
But about Pa. He has been fuller'n a goose ever since New Year's day. I
think its wrong for women to tempt feeble minded persons with liquor
on New Year's. Now me and my chum, we can take a drink and then let it
alone. We have got brain, and know when we have got enough, but Pa, when
he gets to going don't ever stop until he gets so sick that he can't
keep his stummick inside of hisself. It is getting so they look to me to
brace Pa up every time he gets on a tear, and I guess I fixed him this
time so he will never touch liquor again. I scared him so his bald head
turned gray in a singe night.

"What under the heavens have you done to him now?" says the grocery man,
in astonishment. "I hope you haven't done anything you will regret in