I am going to hire an office and put out a sign, 'Boy furnished
to whistle for lost dogs.' You see there are dogs lost every day, and any
man would give half a dollar to a boy to find his dog. I can hire out to
whistle for dogs, and can go around whistling and enjoy myself, and make
money. Don't you think it is a good scheme?" asked the boy of the grocery
man.

"Naw," said the grocery man, as he charged the cheese to the boy's father,
and picked up his cigar stub, which he had left on the counter, and which
the boy had rubbed on the kerosene barrel, "No, sir, that whistle would
scare any dog that heard it. Say, what was your Pa running after the
doctor in his shirt sleeves for last Sunday morning? He looked scared. Was
your Ma sick again?"

"O, no; Ma is healthy enough, now she has got a new fur lined cloak. She
played consumption on Pa, and coughed so she liked to raise her lights and
liver, and made Pa believe she couldn't live, and got the doctor to
prescribe a fur lined circular, and Pa went and got one, and Ma has
improved awfully. Her cough is all gone, and she can walk ten miles. I was
the one that was sick. You see, I wanted to get Pa into the church again,
and get him to stop drinking, so I got a boy to write a letter to
him, in a female hand, and sign the name of a choir singer Pa was mashed
on, and tell him she was yearning for him to come back to the church, and
that the church seemed a blank without his smiling face, and benevolent
heart, and to please come back for her sake. Pa got the letters Saturday
night and he seemed tickled, but I guess he dreamed about it all night,
and Sunday morning he was mad, and he took me by the ear and said I
couldn't come no 'Daisy' business on him the second time. He said he knew
I wrote the letter, and for me to go up to the store room and prepare for
the almightiest licking a boy ever had, and he went down stairs and broke
up an apple barrel and got a stave to whip me with. Well, I had to think
mighty quick, but I was enough for him. I got a dried bladder in my room,
one that me and my chum got to the slotter house, and I blowed it partly
up, so it would be sort of flat like, and I put it down inside the back
part of my pants, right about where Pa hits when he punishes me. I knowed
when the barrel stave hit the bladder it would explode. Well, Pa came up
and found me crying. I can cry just as easy as you can turn on the water
at a faucet, and Pa took off his coat and looke