meat. Sausage meat ought to be strained."

The grocery man pulled in about half a block of twine, after the dog
had run against a fence and broke it, and told the boy he knew perfectly
well how the brass pad-lock came to be in the sausage, but thinking it
was safer to have the good will of the boy than the ill will, he offered
him a handfull of prunes.

"No," says the boy, "I have swore off on mouldy prunes. I am no
kinder-garten any more. For years I have eaten rotten peaches around
this store, and everything you couldn't sell, but I have turned over a
new leaf now, and after this nothing is too good for me, Since Pa has
got to be an inventor, we are going to live high."

"What's your Pa invented? I saw a hearse and three hacks go up on your
street the other day, and I thought may be you had killed your Pa."

"Not much. There will be more than three hacks when I kill Pa, and don't
you forget it. Well, sir, Pa has struck a fortune, if he can make the
thing work. He has got an idea about coal stoves that will bring him
several million dollars, if he gets a royalty of five dollars on every
cook stove in the world. His idea is to have a coal stove on castors
with the pipe made to telescope out and in, and rubber hose for one
joint, so you can pull the stove all around the room and warm any
particular place. Well, sir, to hear Pa tell about it, you would think
it would revolutionize the country, and maybe it will when he gets it
perfected, but he came near burning the house up, and scared us half
to death this morn-ing, and burned his shirt off, and he is all covered
with cotton with sweet oil on, and he smells like salad dressing.

"You see Pa had a pipe made and some castors put on our coal stove,
and he tied a rope to the hearth of the stove, and had me put in some
kindling wood and coal last night, so he could draw the stove up to the
bed and light the fire without getting up. Ma told him he would put
his foot in it, and he told her to dry up, and let him run the stove
business. He said it took a man with brain to run a patent right, and Ma
she pulled the clothes over her head and let Pa do the fire act. She has
been building the fires for twenty years, and thought she would let Pa
see how good it was. Well, Pa pulled the stove to the bed, and touched
off the kindling wood. I guess maybe I got a bundle of kindling wood
that the hired girl had put kerosene on, cause it blazed up awful and
smoked, and the blaze burste