The Worst Boy in Town

t first determined to not even answer any boy who spoke to him, but this led to his being called "Proudy," and "Codfish," a

and began to throw stones at the young gardener, Jack's endurance escaped him suddenly and he dashed at the fence, hoe in hand. All the boys fled except one who, being a rowdy, had hugged one of the palings in the affectionate manner peculiar to rowdies, and had unconsciously established an entangling alliance between the paling and a hole in his shirt. Him, Jack pounded over the head with the hoe h

rity, invested Jack with a bloody nose and a black eye. Jack was not going to abandon the family property, even in a fight, so he retained tight hold of the jugs, raised his hands alternately and smote his antagonist, first with one jug and then with the other. Then the rowdy made haste to cry "Foul!" but Jack, merely remarking, "What's sauce for the goose—" allowed the rowd

he did not know; he recalled the little affair of Moses with the Egyptian taskmaster, and determined that flight was the dictate of prudence, but as for burying his victim in the sand, the

owdy dying out on th

octor; "that'll lessen the stat

g to death,"

of instruments, "that's a different thing; it now

him," continued Jack

t as fast as you can, and not let me know where you are until you have to. Don'

before his eyes in every direction, "let me tell you how it was." And

g so hard to mind you, and not

s arms around the y

no knowing how a jury may look at the case, when your

. Of one thing he was very sure; come what would, he never could ask nice little Mattie Baker to become the wife of a murderer. Then he tiptoed feebly, after one or two ineffectual efforts, to his father's room, which overlooked the scene of the battle; it might be that the doctor had reached the wounded boy in time to staunch the flow of b

e ideal of every boy at a certain period of his life. From this he was recovered by the thought that, after all, nice little Mattie Barker was not to be entirely a memory of the past. His eye and nose finally obtruded themselves upon his

a hero indeed. But when his father assured him that his latest exploit would have a wonderful effect in keeping boys away from him, Jack did not see

fully lonely

y very cool and undemonstrative and removed himself, whereupon Jack, who read the human face as correctly as boys usually do, waxed angry, and lost sight of all

ival candidates were Baggs and Puttytop, and though both were men of fair intellect and reputation, as politicians go, and the adult mind could find but little reason to distinguish between them, the boys of Doveton, who never for a moment doubted that they were in perfect sympathy with the inner sense of statesmanship, and knew the consti

oveton in the main room of the county court house, on the evening of the second Wednesday in September, the regular fall session of the county court ha

ry to light lamps or candles. So, early in the afternoon preceding the Puttytop meeting, Jack secreted himself in an upper room of the court house, with a monkey-wrench, a gunmaker's saw, and a yard of rubber tubing in his shirt bosom. He dragged a step ladder down into the main room, and standing upon this he wrenched from its place the cap upon the pipe from which the central chandelier was one day to hang. Then

the hotel came the noise of the Doveton Brass Band playing "Hail to the Chief;" this indicated that the famous General Twitchwire was to be escorted in st

erve who sta

sustained thereby. Then the sound of

bells are

im in his privation. A tremendous hubbub in the room below came up through the gas pipe and rubber tube, and Jack

air became occupied, he would not say filled, by a person with the deficient mental acumen and erroneous views which characterized the person who was the sta

don't

ould be only by tickets of a peculiar color, wondered whether counterfeit tickets had been imposed upon the doorkeeper. The

ytop! Give

own that a frequenter of Gripp's rum-shop had sold a ticket for ten cents, the inducement offered being that the meeting would close with a lottery, in which every ticket holder would be entitled to a pr

mous General Twitchwire took occasion to remark, with a great display of offended dignity, that if the authori

od grant!) shouted

d frequently to be aroused in church; he was very religious and musically inclined; the force of association caused him to imagine he was in church; the silence to indicate a temporary and dangerous stagnation of religious service, so he cleared his throat and successfully launched the first line of a devotional song before he opened his eyes, when a rude hand

ious epithet at a conspicuous rowdy, and the rowdy retorted by snatching a transparency from a bearer and throwing it lancewise at the German, and the cloth caught fire, and a general yell ensued, and everybody looked out for number one, with the result of making number two of everybody else, and the famous General Twitchwire stepped sudd