ar it
for a watch pocket in your vest. No boy can frighten me by crimus. But
tell me, how did you get even with your Pa?"

"Well, give me a glass of cider and we will be friends and I will tell
you. Thanks! Gosh, but that cider is made out of mouldy dried apples and
sewer water," and he took a handful of layer raisins off the top of a
box to take the taste out of his mouth, and while the grocer charged a
peck of rutabagas, a gallon of cider and two pounds of raisins to the
boy's Pa, the boy proceeded: "You see, Pa likes a joke the best of
anybody you ever saw, if it is on somebody else, but he kicks like a
steer when it is on him. I asked him this morning if it wouldn't be a
good joke to put some soft soap on the front step, so the letter carrier
would slip up and spill his-self, and Pa said it would be elegant. Pa is
a Democrat, and he thinks that anything that will make it unpleasant
for Republican office holders, is legitimate, and he encouraged me to
paralyze the letter-carrier. The letter-carrier is as old a man as Pa,
and I didn't want to humiliate him, but I just wanted Pa to give his
consent, so he couldn't kick if he got caught in his own trap. You
see?

"Well, this morning the minister and two of the deacons called on
Pa, to have a talk with him about his actions in church, on two or three
occasions, when he pulled out the pack of cards with his handkerchief,
and played the music box, and they had a pretty hot time in the back
parlor, and finally they settled it, and were going to sing a hymn, when
Pa handed them a little hymn book, and the minister opened it and turned
pale and said, 'what's this?' and they looked at it, and it was a book
of Hoyle's games instead of a hymn book. Gosh, wasn't the minister mad!
He had started to read a hymn and he quit after he read two lines where
it said, 'In a game of four-handed euchre, never trump your partner's
ace, but rely on the ace to take the trick on suit.' Pa was trying to
explain how the book came to be there, when the minister and the deacons
started out, and then I poured the two quart tin pail full of soft soap
on the front step. It was this white soap, just the color of the step,
and when I got it spread I went down in the basement. The visitors came
out and Pa was trying to explain to them, about Hoyle, when one of the
deacons stepped in the soap, and his feet flew up and he struck on his
pants and slid down the steps. The minister said 'great heavens, deaco