was one of the robbers that jumped on him, and he wanted to whip the minister, but the doc. held Pa’s arms and Ma sat on his legs, and the minister said he had got some other calls to make, and he wished Ma a happy new year in the hall, much as fifteen minutes.  His happy new year to Ma is most as long as his prayers.  Well, we got Pa to bed, and when we undressed him we found nine napkins in the bosom of his vest, that he had picked up at the places where he had called.  He is all right this morning, but he says it is the last time he will drink coffee when he makes New Years calls.

“Well, then you didn’t have much fun yourself on New Years.  That’s too bad,” said the grocery man, as he looked at the sad eyed youth.  “But you look hard.  If you were old enough I should say you had been drunk, your eyes are red.”

[Illustration:  Happy new year, mum!]

“Didn’t have any fun eh?  Well, I wish I had as many dollars as I had fun.  You see, after Pa got to sleep Ma wanted me and my chum to go to the houses that Pa had called at and return the napkins he had kleptomaniaced, so we dressed up and went.  The first house we called at the girls were sort of demoralized.  I don’t know as I ever saw a girl drunk, but those girls acted queer.  The callers had stopped coming, and the girls were drinking something out of shaving cups that looked like lather, and they said it was ‘aignogg.’  They laffed and kicked up their heels wuss nor a circus, and their collars got unpinned, and their faces was red, and they put their arms around me and my chum and hugged us and asked us if we didn’t want some of the custard.  You’d a dide to see me and my chum drink that lather.  It looked just like soap suds with nutmaig in it, but by gosh it got in its work sudden.  At first I was afraid when the girls hugged me, but after I had drank a couple of shaving cups full of the ‘aignogg’ I wasn’t afraid no more, and I hugged a girl so hard she catched her breath and panted and said, ‘O, don’t.’  Then I kissed her, and she is a great big girl, bigger’n me, but she didn’t care.  Say, did you ever kiss a girl full of aignogg?  If you did it would break up your grocery business.  You would want to waller in bliss instead of selling mackerel.  My chum ain’t no slouch either.  He was sitting in a stuffed chair holding another New Year’s girl, and I could hear him kiss her so it sounded like a cutter scraping on bare ground.  But the girl’s Pa came in and said he guessed it was time to close the place, unless they had a license for an all night house, and me and my chum went out.  But wasn’t we sick when we got out doors.  O, it seemed as though the pegs in my boots was the only thing that kept them down, and my chum he like to dide.  He had been to dinner and supper and I had only been skating all day, so he had more to contend with than I did.  O, my, but that lets me out on aignogg.  I don’t know how I got home, but I got in bed