Pecks Compendium of Fun | Page 3

I interpreted the story this way, that the whale was
fixed up inside with upper and lower berths, like a sleeping car, and
Joner had a lower berth, and the porter made up the berth as soon as
Joner came in with his satchel, and Joner pulled off his boots and gave
them to the porter to black, and put his watch under the pillow and
turned in. The boys in Sunday school all laffed, and the minister said I
was a bigger fool than Pa was, and that was useless. If you go back on
me, now, I won't have a friend, except my chum and a dog, and I swear,
by my halidom, that I never put no sand in your sugar, or kerosene in
your butter. I admit the picking off of the codfish, but you can charge it
to Pa, the same as you did the eggs that I pushed my chum over into
last summer, though I thought you did wrong in charging Christmas
prices for dog days eggs. When my chum's Ma scraped his pants she
said there was not an egg represented on there that was less than two
years old. The Sunday school folks have all gone back on me, since I
put kyan pepper on the stove, when they were singing 'Little Drops of
Water,' and they all had to go out doors and air themselves, but I didn't
mean to let the pepper drop on the stove. I was just holding it over the
stove to warm it, when my chum hit the funny bone of my elbow. Pa

says I am a terror to cats. Every time Pa says anything, it gives me a
new idea. I tell you Pa has got a great brain, but sometimes he don't
have it with him. When he said I was a terror to cats I thought what fun
there is in cats, and me and my chum went to stealing cats right off, and
before night we had eleven cats caged. We had one in a canary bird
cage, three in Pa's old hat boxes, three in Ma's band box, four in valises,
two in a trunk, and the rest in a closet up stairs.
"That night Pa said he wanted me to stay home because the committee
that is going to get up a noyster supper in the church was going to meet
at our house, and they might want to send me on errands. I asked him if
my chum couldn't stay too, 'cause he is the healthiest infant to run after
errands that ever was, and Pa said he could stay, but we must remember
that there musn't be no monkey business going on. I told him there
shouldn't be no monkey business, but I didn't promise nothing about
cats. Well, sir, you'd a dide. The committee was in the library by the
back stairs, and me and my chum got the cat boxes all together, at the
top of the stairs, and we took them all out and put them in a clothes
basket, and just as the minister was speaking, and telling what a great
good was done by these oyster sociables, in bringing the young people
together, and taking their minds from the wickedness of the world, and
turning their thoughts into different channels, one of the old tom cats in
the basket gave a 'purmeow' that sounded like the wail of a lost soul, or
a challenge to battle. I told my chum that we couldn't hold the
bread-board over the clothes basket much longer, when two or three
cats began to yowl, and the minister stopped talking and Pa told Ma to
open the stair door and tell the hired girl to see what was the matter up
there. She thought our cat had got shut up in the storm door, and she
opened the stair door to yell to the girl, and then I pushed the clothes
basket, cats and all down the back stairs. Well, sir, I suppose no
committee for a noyster supper, was ever more astonished. I heard Ma
fall over a willow rocking chair, and say, 'scat,' and I heard Pa say,
'well. I'm dam'd,' and a girl that sings in the choir say, 'Heavens, I am
stabbed,' then my chum and me ran to the front of the house and come
down the front stairs looking as innocent as could be, and we went in
the library, and I was just going to tell Pa if there was any errands he
wanted run my chum and me was just aching to run them, when a

yellow cat without any tail was walking over the minister, and Pa was
throwing a hassock at two cats that were clawing each other