Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1893-10-11
CHAPTER XXI.
HIS PA AND DYNAMITE,

II guess your Pas losses in the silver
mine have made him crazy, haven't
they! said the grocery man to the bad
boy as he came III the store with his eye
wlnkers singed off and powder marks on
his face and began to play on the har-
monica as he sat down on the end of
stick of stove wood and balanced himself
''Oh, | guess not. He has hedged. He
got in with deacon of another church
and sold some of his stock to him, and
Pa says if | viii keep my condemn
mouth shut he will unload the whole of
1t If the churches hold out. He goes to
new church every night there is prayer
meeting or anything and makes Ma go
with him to give him tone, and after
meeting she talks to the sisters about
how to piece a silk bed quilt, while Pa
gets in his work selling silver stock. |
don't know but he will order some more
stock from the factory if he sells all he
has got, and the boy went on playing
There's land that is fairer than day"
But what was he skipping up street
for the other night with his hat OF,
grabbing at his coat tails as though they
We're on fire? | thought | never saw a
pussy man run any faster. And what
was the celebration down on your street
about that time? thought the world
was coming to an end" and the grocery
man kept away from the boy for fear
he would explode.
"Oh, that was only Fenian scare
Nothin serious. You see Pa is a sort of
half Englishman. He claims to be an
American citizen when he wants office,
but when they talk about a draft he
claims to be a subject of Great Britain,
and he says they can't touch him. Pa is
darn smart man and don't you forget
| it. There don't any of them get ahead
| or Pa zach. Wen, ia mas Salu a GOOD
| deal about the wicked Fenians, and that
they ought to be pulled and all that, and
when l read the story in the papers
about the explosion in the British par
| Lament Pa was hot. He said the dam
Nirish was running the whole world. He
| didn't dare say it at the table or our
hired girl would have knocked him silly
with a spoonful of mashed potatoes,
cause she is a Nirish girl, and she can
lick any Englishman in this town.
PA said there ought to have been
somebody there to have taken that bomb
up and throwed it in the sewer before it
exploded. He said that if he ever should
see bomb he would grab it right up
and throw it away where it wouldn't
hurt anybody. Pa has me read the pa
pers to him nights, cause his eyes have
got splinters in EN-, and after had read
all there was in the paper made up
lot more and pretended. to read it, about
how it was rumored that the Fenians
| here in Milwaukee were going to place
| dynamite bombs at every house where
an Englishman lived and at given sig
nal blow them all up. Pa looked pale
around the gills, but he said he wasn't
scared.
"Pa and Ma We're going to call on
she deacon that night, that has lots of
money in tn, bank, to see if she didn't
want to invest in dead sure paying sill
yer mine, and me and my chum conclud-
ed to give them sendoff We got my
| big black injy rubber football and paint
| ed 'Dinymight' in big white letters on it
and tied piece of tarred rope to it for a
fuse and got a big frecracker, one of
those old Fourth of July horse scarers,
and basket full of broken glass. We
put the football ir-front of the step and
lit the tarred rope and got under the
| step with the firecrackers and basket,
where they go down into the basement.
Pa and Ma came out the front door and
down the steps, and Pa saw the football
and Jthe burning fuse, and he said, Great
| God, Hammer, we are blowed upr and he
started to run, and Ma she stopped to
| look at it.
"Just as Pa started to run l touched
| off the frecracker, and my chum ar
| ranged it to pour out the broken glass
on the brick pavement just as the fire.
cracker went off. Well, everything went
just as we expected, except Ma. She had
examined the football and concluded it
was not dangerous and was just giving
kick as the frecracker went off and
| the glass fell, and the frecracker was so
near her that it scared hef, and when Pa
| looked around Ma was flying across the
sidewalk, and Pa heard the noise, and he
thought the house was blown to atoms.
Oh, you'd "a died to see him go around the
corner. You could play crokay on his
coattail, and his face was as pale as Mas
when she goes to party. But Ma didn't
scare much. As quick as she stopped
against the hitching post she knew it was
us boys, and she came down there, and
maybe she didn't maui me- cried and
tried to gain her sympathy by telling her
the firecracker went off before it was