"
"O, that is some of Pa's darn smartness. I asked him if he knew anything
that would make a boy's moustache grow, and he told me the best thing he
ever tried was tar, and for me to rub it on thick when I went to bed, and
wash it off in the morning. I put it on last night, and by gosh I can't
wash it off. Pa told me all I had to do was to use a scouring brick, and
it would come off, and I used the brick, and it took the skin off, and the
tar is there yet, and say, does my lip look very bad?"
The grocery man told him it was the worst looking lip he ever saw, but he
could cure it by rubbing a little cayenne pepper in the tar. He said the
tar would neutralize the pepper, and the pepper would loosen the tar, and
act as a cooling lotion to the lacerated lip. The boy went to a can of
pepper behind the counter, and stuck his finger in and rubbed a lot of it
on his lip, and then his hair began to raise, and he began to cry, and
rushed to the water-pail and ran his face into the water to wash off the
pepper. The grocery man laughed, and when the boy had got the pepper
washed off, and had resumed his rutabaga, he said:
"That seals your fate. No man ever trifles with the feelings of the bold
buccanner of the Spanish main, without living to rue it. I will lay for
you, old man, and don't you forget it.
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