PECK'S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.
HE QUITS THE DRUG BUSINESS.
"What are you loafing around here for," says the grocery man to the bad
boy one day this week. "It is after nine o'clock, and I should think you
would want to be down to the drug store. How do you know but there may be
somebody dying for a dose of pills?"
"O, darn the drug store. I have got sick of that business, and I have
dissolved with the drugger. I have resigned. The policy of the store did
not meet with my approval, and I have stepped out and am waiting for them
to come and tender me a better position at an increased salary," said the
boy, as he threw a cigar stub into a barrel of prunes and lit a fresh one.
"Resigned, eh?" said the grocery man as he fished out the cigar stub and
charged the boy's father with two pounds of prunes, didn't you and the
boss agree?"
"Not exactly, I gave an old lady some gin when she asked for camphor and
water, and she made a show of herself. I thought I would fool her, but she
knew mighty well what it was, and she drank about half a pint of gin, and
got to tipping over bottles and kegs of paint, and when the drug man came
in with his wife, the old woman threw her arms around his neck and called
him her darling, and when he pushed her away, and told her she was drunk,
she picked up a bottle of citrate of magnesia and pointed it at him, and
the cork came out like a pistol, and he thought he was shot, and his wife
fainted away, and the police came and took the old gin refrigerator away,
and then the drug man told me to face the door, and, when I wasn't looking
he kicked me four times, and I landed in the street, and he said if I ever
came in sight of the store again he would kill me dead.
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