PECK’S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.
[HIS PA GETS BOXED.]
“You don’t want to buy a good parrot, do you?” said the bad boy to the grocery man as he put his wet mittens on the top of the stove to dry, and kept his back to the stove so he could watch the grocery man, and be prepared for a kick, if the man should remember the rotten egg sign that the boy put up in front of the grocery last week.
“Naw, I don’t want no parrot. I had rather have a fool boy around than a parrot. But what’s the matter with your Ma’s parrot? I thought she wouldn’t part with him for anything.”
“Well, she wouldn’t until Wednesday night, but now she says she will not have him around, and I may have half I can get for him. She told me to go to some saloon or some disreputable place and sell him, and I thought maybe he would about suit you,” and the boy broke into a bunch of celery, and took out a few tender stalks and rubbed them on a codfish to salt them, and began to bite the stalks, while he held the sole of one wet boot up against the stove to dry it, making a smell of burned leather that came near turning the stomach of the cigar sign.
“Look-a-here boy, don’t you call this a disreputable place. Some of the best people in this town come here,” said the grocery man as he held up the cheese knife and grated his teeth as though he would like to jab it into the youth.
“O, that’s all right, they come here ’cause you trust; but you make up what you lose by charging it to other people. Pa will make it hot for you the last of the week. He has been looking over your bill, and comparing it with the hired girl, and she says we haven’t ever had a prune, or a dried apple, or a raisin, or any cinnamon, or crackers and cheese out of your store, and he says you are worse than the James brothers, and that you used to be a three card monte man, and he will have you arrested for highway robbery, but you can settle that with Pa. I like you, because you are no ordinary sneak thief, you are a high-toned, gentlemanly sort of a bilk, and wouldn’t take anything you couldn’t lift. O, keep your seat, and don’t get excited. It does a man good to hear the truth from one who has got the nerve to tell it.
“But about the parrot. Ma has been away from home for a week, having a high old time in Chicago, going to theatres and things, and while she was gone, I guess the hired girl or somebody learned the parrot some new things to say. A parrot that can only say ‘Polly wants a cracker,’ don’t amount to anything—what we need is new style parrots that can converse on the topics of the day, and say things original. Well, when Ma got back I guess her conscience hurt her for the way she had been carrying on in Chicago, and so when she heard the basement of the church was being frescoed, she invited the committee to hold the Wednesday evening prayer meeting at our house. First, there were four people came, and Ma asked Pa to stay to make up a quorum, and Pa said seeing he had two pair, he guessed he would stay in, and if Ma would deal him a queen he would have a full hand. I don’t know what Pa meant, but he plays draw poker sometimes. Anyway there was eleven people came including the minister, and after they had talked about the neighbors a spell, and Ma had showed the women a new tidy she had worked for the heathen, with a motto on it which Pa had taught her: ‘A contrite heart beats a bob-tailed flush,’—and Pa had talked to the men about a religious silver mine he was selling stock in, which he advised them as a friend to buy for the glory of the church, they all went in the back parlor and the minister lead in prayer. He got down on his knees right under the parrot’s cage, and you’d a dide to see Polly hang on to the wires of the cage with one foot, and drop an apple core on the minister’s head. Ma shook her handkerchief at Polly, and looked sassy, and Polly got up on the perch, and as the minister got warmed up and began to raise the roof, Polly said, ‘O, dry up.’ The minister had his eyes shut, but he opened one of them a little and looked at Pa. Pa was tickled at the parrot, but when the minister looked at Pa as though it was him that was making irreverent remarks, Pa was mad.
“The minister got to the ‘amen,’ and Polly shook hisself and said ‘What you giving us?’ and the minister got up and brushed the bird seed off his knees, and he looked mad. I thought Ma would sink with mortification, and I was sitting on a piano stool looking as pious as a Sunday school superintendent the Sunday before he skips out with the bank’s funds; and Ma looked at me as though she thought it was me that had been tampering with the parrot. Gosh, I never said a word to that parrot, and I can prove it by my chum.
“Well, the minister asked one of the sisters if she wouldn’t pray, and she wasn’t engaged, so she said with pleasure, and she kneeled down, but she corked herself, cause she got one knee on a cast-iron dumb bell that I had been practising with. She said ‘O my,’ in a disgusted sort of a way, and then she began to pray for the reformation of the youth of the land, and asked for the spirit to descend on the household, and particularly on the boy that was such a care and anxiety to his parents, and just then Polly said ‘O, pull down your vest.’ Well, you’d a dide to see that woman look at me. The parrot cage was partly behind the window curtin, and they couldn’t see it, and she thought it was me. She looked at Ma as though she was wondering why she didn’t hit me with a poker, but she went on, and Polly said ‘wipe off your chin,’ and then the lady got through and got up, and told Ma it must be a great trial to have an idiotic child, and then Ma she was mad, and said it wasn’t half so bad as it was to be a kleptomaniac, and then the woman got up and said she wouldn’t stay no longer, and Pa said to me to take that parrot outdoors, and that seemed to make them all good natured again. Ma said to take the parrot and give it to the poor. I took the cage and pointed my finger at the parrot and it looked at the woman and said ‘old catamaran,’ and the woman tried to look pious and resigned, but she couldn’t. As I was going out the door the parrot ruffed up his feathers and said ‘Dammit, set ’em up,’ and I hurried out with the cage for fear he would say something bad, and the folks all held up their hands and said it was scandalous. Say, I wonder if a parrot can go to hell with the rest of the community. Well, I put the parrot in the woodshed, and after they all had their innings, except Pa, who acted as umpire, the meeting broke up, and Ma says it is the last time she will have that gang at her house.
“That must have been where your Pa got his black eye,” said the grocery man, as he charged the bunch of celery to the boy’s Pa. “Did the minister hit him, or was it one of the sisters?”
“O, he didn’t get his black eye at prayer meeting!” said the boy, as he took his mittens off the stove, and rubbed them to take the stiffening out. “It was from boxing. Pa told my chum and me that it was no harm to learn to box, cause we could defend ourselves, and he said he used to be a holy terror with the boxing gloves when he was a boy, and he has been giving us lessons. Well, he is no slouch, now I tell you, and handles himself pretty well for a church member. I read in the paper how Zack Chandler played it on Conkling by getting Jem Mace, the prize fighter, to knock him silly, and I asked Pa if he wouldn’t let me bring a poor boy who had no father to teach him boxing, to our house to learn to box, and Pa said certainly, fetch him along. He said he would be glad to do anything for a poor orphan. So I went down in the Third ward and got an Irish boy by the name of Duffy, who can knock the socks off any boy in the ward. He fit a prize fight once. It would have made you laugh to see Pa telling him how to hold his hands and how to guard his face. He told Duffy not to be afraid, but strike right out and hit for keeps. Duffy said he was afraid Pa would get mad if he hit him, and Pa said, ‘nonsense, boy, knock me down if you can, and I will laugh ha! ha!’ Well, Duffy he hauled back and gave Pa one on the nose, and another in both eyes, and cuffed him on the ear and punched him in the stomach, and lammed him in the mouth and made his teeth bleed, and then he gave him a side winder in both eyes, and Pa pulled off his boxing gloves and grabbed a chair, and we adjourned and went down stairs as though there was a panic. I haven’t seen Pa since. Was his eye very black?”
“Black, I should say so,” said the grocery man. “And his nose seemed to be trying to look into his left ear. He was at the market buying beefsteak to put on it.”
“O, beefsteak is no account. I must go and see him and tell him that an oyster is the best thing for a black eye. Well, I must go. A boy has a pretty hard time running a house the way it should be run,” and the boy went out and hung up a sign in front of the grocery: “Frowy Butter a Speshulty.”
[CHRISTMAS TREES.]
There is too much dress parade about Christmas. Too many Christmas trees where rich children get club skates, and gold napkin rings, and poor children get pop corn strung on a string, and cornucopias full of peppermint candy.
[THE BOB-TAILED BADGER.]
The last legislature, having nothing else to do, passed a law providing for a change in the coat-of-arms of the State. There was no change particularly, except to move the plows and shovels around a little, put on a few more bars of pig lead, put a new-fashioned necktie on the sailor who holds the rope, the emblem of lynch law, tuck the miner’s breeches into his boots a little further, and amputate the tail of the badger. We do not care for the other changes, as they were only intended to give the engraver a job, but when an irresponsible legislature amputates the tail of the badger, the emblem of the Democratic party, that crawls into a hole and pulls the hole in after him, it touches us in our patriotism.
The badger, as nature made him, is a noble bird, and though he resembles a skunk too much to be very proud of, they had no right to cut off his tail and stick it up like a sore thumb. As it is now the new comer to our Garden of Eden will not know whether our emblem is a Scotch terrier, smelling into the archives of the State for a rat, or a defalcation, or a sic semper Americanus scunch. We do not complain that the sailor with a Pinafore shirt on, on the new coat-of-arms, is made to resemble Senator Cameron, or that the miner looks like Senator Sawyer. These things are of minor importance, but the docking of that badger’s tail, and setting it up like a bob-tail horse, is an outrage upon every citizen of the State, and when the Democrats get into power, that tail shall be restored to its normal condition if it takes all the blood and treasure in the State, and this work of the Republican incendiaries shall be undone. The idea of Wisconsin appearing among the galaxy of States with a bob-tailed badger is repugnant to all our finer feelings.
[TERROR IN CHURCH.]
A ridiculous scene occurred at Palmyra, the other day. The furnace in the basement of the church is reached by a trap door, which is right beside the pulpit. There was a new preacher there from abroad, and he did not know anything about the trap door, and the sexton went down there to fix the fire, before the new minister arrived. The minister had just got warmed up in his sermon, and was picturing to his hearers hell in all its heat. He had got excited and told of the lake of burning brimstone below, where the devil was the stoker, and where the heat was ten thousand times hotter than a political campaign, and where the souls of the wicked would roast, and fry, and stew until the place froze over.
Wiping the perspiration from his face, he said, pointing, to the floor, “Ah, my friends, look down into that seething, burning lake, and—” Just at this point the trap door raised a little, and the sexton’s face, with coal smut all over it, appeared. He wanted to come up and hear the sermon.
“AH, MY FRIENDS, LOOK DOWN INTO THAT BURNING LAKE!”
If hell had broke loose, the new minister could not have been more astonished. He stepped back, grasped his manuscript, and was just about to jump from the pulpit, when a deacon on the front seat said, “It’s all right, brother; he has only been down below to see about the fire.” The sexton came up and shut down the trap door, the color came back to the face of the minister, and he went on, though the incident seemed to take the tuck all out of him.
A traveling man who happened to be at the church tells us that he knows the minister was scared, for he sweat so that the perspiration run right down on the carpet and made a puddle as though a dipper of water had been tipped over there. The minister says he was not scared, but we don’t see how he could help it.
[FISH HATCHING IN WISCONSIN.]
I would suggest that you permit the subject of the artificial hatching of fish to engage your attention, and that you appropriate several dollars to purchase whale’s eggs, vegetable oysters and mock turtle seeds. The hatching of fish is easy, and any man can soon learn it; and it is a branch of industry that many who are now out of employment, owing to circumstances beyond their control, will be glad to avail themselves of. How, I ask you, could means better be adapted to the ends than for the retiring officers of our State to go to setting on fish eggs?
[TRAINS WITHOUT CONDUCTORS.]
Since the introduction of the patent air brake on passenger trains, by which brakemen have been dispensed with, a number of patent right men have been studying up some contrivance to do away with conductors. All have failed except one, and that fortunate inventor is Col. Johnson, of the Railroad Eating House, Milwaukee. He has been engaged for two years on this patent, and has got it so near completed that he has filed a caveat at the Patent Office, and as his rights are secured, it can do no harm to describe the invention, as it is destined to work quite a revolution in the railroad business. It has been Col. Johnson’s idea that an arrangement could be made so that an engineer of a train could have the whole train under his charge, to stop it, start it, collect fares, and bounce impecunious passengers, from his position on the engine, and do it all by steam, wind and water. A series of pneumatic tubes run from the door of each car to the engine, with speaking tubes. A passenger gets on the platform, and through the speaking tube asks the engineer what the fare is to such a place. The answer is returned, the fare is put in the hopper of the pneumatic tube, it goes to the engineer, he pulls a string, the door flies open and the passenger enters. Not the least important part of the machinery is the patent “æolian bouncer,” as it is called. A pair of ice tongs are placed so as to grasp the passenger by the seat of the pants or the polonaise, as the case may be, when he or she gets on the platform. These tongs are connected with the air brakes, in such a manner that by the engineer’s touching a spring the whole force of the compressed air takes possession of the tongs, and the passenger is snatched bald-headed, metaphorically speaking. For instance, a passenger gets on the platform at Portage, and the ice tongs grasp him or her securely. If he or she pays the fare, the door is opened, the tongs release their hold, and the person is allowed to enter. But if the engineer should find that they had no money, or that their pass had run out, and they were trying to beat their way, he would pull the string and they would be lifted back on the depot steps and stood on their heads, raised in the air and made to see stars. Col. Johnson has been offered a fabulous sum for his patent, but he has not decided whether to sell or lease it. A trial trip was made at Milwaukee, the other day, and though the machine was not perfect, the experiment was not altogether a failure. A car was arranged with the apparatus, and went out to the Soldier’s Home. Col. Johnson and a number of prominent railroad men were on board. They got a veteran soldier and a Polack waman to allow the machine to experiment on them. The machine took hold of the soldier and the engineer jerked. The man had one leg torn off, and the seat of his overcoat was ruined. He wouldn’t try again, so they let the woman step on the platform. The engineer turned it the wrong way, and the car seemed full of compressed air, and a smell of limberger cheese pervaded the premises. When the smoke cleared off the woman was not to be found. After voting the machine a success the party started for Milwaukee. On nearing the city a pair of wooden shoes were seen in the air coming down, and they lit in the the canal by the tannery. A pair of corsets struck on Plankinton’s packing house, and sections of spinal cord, and one leg of a pair of red drawers came down on the Soldier’s home, and hair was found on the top of the car. It is thought the engineer loaded the air bouncer too heavy, and that it kicked. However, Col. Johnson was not discouraged, and will soon have his patent on all cars. The husband of the Polack woman wanted Johnson to pay him three dollars, but he said he didn’t want to buy the woman. All he wanted was to hire her, anyway. Col. Johnson is a great inventor. It was he that invented the stomach pump, and the automatic candle enunciator, for awakening guests in the night to take early trains. The latter he sold to Mr. Williams, of Prairie du Chien, for a large amount and took his pay in trade.
[RAISING ELEPHANTS.]
Why not go to raising elephants? A good elephant will sell for eight thousand dollars. A pair of elephants can be bought by a community of farmers pooling their issues and getting a start, and in a few years every farm can be a menagerie of it own, and every year we can rake in from eight to twenty-four thousand dollars from the sale of surplus elephants. It may be said that elephants are hearty feeders, and that they would go through an ordinary farmer in a short time. Well, they can be turned out into the highway to browse, and earn their own living. This elephant theory is a good one, and any man that is good on figures can sit down and figure up a profit in a year sufficient to go into bankruptcy.
[THE POWER OF ELOQUENCE.]
A justice of the peace at Menasha, wanted to kill Pratt, the editor of the Press. The matter has been compromised, however. Pratt got the justice cornered up, and delivered one of the speeches to him that he delivered during the campaign last fall, and the justice got on his knees and said, “Pratt, this thing is all right, I surrender.”
[A TRYING SITUATION.]
It was along in the winter, and the prominent church members were having a business meeting in the basement of the church to devise ways and means to pay for the pulpit furniture. The question of an oyster sociable had been decided, and they got to talking about oysters, and one old deaconess asked a deacon if he didn’t think raw oysters would go further at a sociable, than stewed oysters.
THE WANDERING OYSTER.
He said he thought raw oysters would go further, but they wouldn’t be as satisfying. And then he went on to tell how far a raw oyster went once with him. He said he was at a swell dinner party with a lady on each side of him, and he was trying to talk to both of them, or carry on two conversations, on two different subjects at the same time.
They had some shell oysters, and he took up one on a fork—a large, fat one—and was about to put it in his mouth, when the lady on his left called his attention, and when the cold fork struck his teeth, and no oyster on it, he felt as though it had escaped, but he made no sign. He went on talking with the lady as though nothing had happened. He glanced down at his shirt bosom, and was at once on the trail of the oyster, though the insect had got about two minutes start of him. It had gone down his vest under the waistband of his clothing, and he was powerless to arrest its progress.
He said he never felt how powerless he was until he tried to grab that oyster by placing his hand on his person, outside his clothes; then, as the oyster slipped around from one place to another, he felt that man was only a poor, weak creature.
The oyster, he observed, had very cold feet, and the more he tried to be calm and collected, the more the oyster seemed to walk around among his vitals.
He says he does not know whether the ladies noticed the oyster when it started on its travels or not, but he thought, as he leaned back and tried to loosen up his clothing, so it would hurry down toward his shoes, that they winked at each other, though they might have been winking at something else.
The oyster seemed to be real spry until it got out of reach, and then it got to going slow as the slikery covering wore off, and by the time it had worked into his trousers leg, it was going very slow, though it remained cold to the last, and he hailed the arrival of that oyster into the heel of his stocking with more delight than he did the raising of the American flag over Vicksburg, after the long siege.
[THE GIDDY GIRLS QUARREL.]
A dispatch from Brooklyn states that at the conclusion of a performance at the theatre, Fanny Davenport’s wardrobe was attached by Anna Dickinson and the remark is made that Fanny will contest the matter. Well, we should think she would. What girl would sit down silently and allow another to attach her wardrobe without contesting? It is no light thing for an actress to have her wardrobe attached after the theatre is out. Of course Fanny could throw something over her, a piece of scenery, or a curtain, and go to her hotel, but how would she look? Miss Davenport always looked well with her wardrobe on, but it may have been all in the wardrobe. Without a wardrobe she may look very plain and unattractive.
Anna Dickinson has done very wrong. She has struck Fanny in a vital part. An actress with a wardrobe is one of the noblest works of nature. She is the next thing to an honest man, which is the noblest work, though we do not say it boastingly. We say she is next to an honest man, with a wardrobe, but if she has no wardrobe it is not right. However, we will change the subject before it gets too deep for us.
Now, the question is, what is Anna Dickinson going to do with Fanny’s wardrobe? She may think Fanny’s talent goes with it, but if she will carefully search the pockets she will find that Fanny retains her talent, and has probably hid it under a bushel, or an umbrella, or something, before this time. Anna cannot wear Fanny’s wardrobe to play on the stage, because she is not bigger than a banana, while Fanny is nearly six feet long, from tip to tip. If Anna should come out on a stage with the Davenport wardrobe, the boys would throw rolls of cotton batting at her.
Fanny’s dress, accustomed to so much talent, would have to be stuffed full of stuff. There would be room enough in Fanny’s dress, if Anna had it on, as we remember the two, to put in a feather bed, eleven rolls of cotton batting, twelve pounds of bird seed, four rubber air cushions, two dozen towels, two brass bird cages, a bundle of old papers, a sack of bran and a bale of hay. That is, in different places. Of course all this truck wouldn’t go in the dress in any one given locality. If Anna should put on Fanny’s dress, and have it filled up so it would look any way decent, and attempt to go to Canada, she would be arrested for smuggling.
Why, if Dickinson should put on a pair of Davenport’s stockings, now for instance, it would be necessary to get out a search warrant to find her. She could pin the tops of them at her throat with a brooch, and her whole frame would not fill one stocking half as well as they have been filled before being attached, and Anna would look like a Santa Claus present of a crying doll, hung on to a mantel piece.
Fanny Davenport is one of the handsomest and splendidest formed women on the American stage, and a perfect lady, while Dickinson, who succeeds to her old clothes through the law, is small, not handsome, and a quarrelsome female who thinks she has a mission. The people of this country had rather see Fanny Davenport without any wardrobe to speak of than to see Dickinson with clothes enough to start a second hand store.
[THE UNIVERSAL OBJECT.]
The object that every man has in view, whether he be farmer, mechanic, preacher, editor, or tramp, is to make money.
[THE MISTAKE ABOUT IT.]
There is nothing that is more touching than the gallantry of men, total strangers, to a lady who has met with an accident. Any man who has a heart in him, who sees a lady whose apparel has become disarranged in such a manner that she cannot see it, will, though she be a total stranger, tell her of her misfortune, so she can fix up and not be stared at. But sometimes these efforts to do a kindly action are not appreciated, and men get fooled.
This was illustrated at Watertown last week. People have no doubt noticed that one of the late fashions among women is to wear at the bottom of the dress a strip of red, which goes clear around. To the initiated it looks real nice, but a man who is not posted in the fashions would swear that the woman’s petticoat was dropping off, and if she was not notified, and allowed to fix it, she would soon be in a terrible fix on the street.
It was a week ago Monday that a lady from Oshkosh was at Watertown on a visit, and she wore a black silk dress with a red strip on the bottom. As she walked across the bridge Mr. Calvin Cheeney, a gentleman whose heart is in the right place, saw what he supposed would soon be a terrible accident, which would tend to embarrass the lady, so he stepped up to her in the politest manner possible, took off his hat and said:
“Excuse me, madame, but I think your wearing apparel is becoming disarranged. You might step right into Clark’s, here, and fix it,” and he pointed to the bottom of her dress.
She gave him a look which froze his blood, and shaking her dress out she went on. He said it was the last time he would ever try to help a woman in distress.
She sailed along down to a grocery store and stopped to look at some grapes, when the practiced eye of Hon. Peter Brook saw that something was wrong. To think is to act with Peter, and he at once said:
“Miss, your petticoat seems to be dropping off. You can go in the store and get behind that box of codfish and fix it if you want to.”
Now that was a kind thing for Peter to do, and an act that any gentleman might be proud of, but he was amazed at her when she told him to mind his own business, and she would attend to her own petticoat, and she marched off just a trifle mad.
She went into the postoffice to mail a postal card, just as Mr. Moak, the postmaster, came out of his private office with Hon. L.B. Caswell, the congressman. Mr. Moak, without the aid of his glasses, saw that there was liable to be trouble, so he asked Caswell to excuse him a moment, and turning to the delivery window where she was asking the clerk what time the mail came in, he said:
“I beg a thousand pardons, madame. It ill becomes a stranger to speak to one so fair without an introduction, but I believe that I am not violating the civil service rules laid down by Mr. Hayes for the guidance of postmasters when I tell you, lady, that something has broke loose and that the red garment that you fain would hide from the gaze of the world has asserted itself and appears to the naked eye about two chains and three links below your dress. I am going abroad, to visit Joe Lindon, the independent candidate for sheriff, and you can step into the back office and take a reef in it.”
He did not see the look of fire in her eyes as he went out, because he was not looking at her eye. She passed out, and Doc Spaulding, who has got a heart in him as big as a box car, saw it, and touching his broad brimmed felt hat he said, in a whisper:
“Madame, you better drop into a millinery store and fasten up your—”
But she passed him on a run, and was just going into a hardware store, with her hand on her pistol pocket, when Jule Keyes happened along. Now, Jule would consider himself a horse thief if he should allow a woman to go along the street with anything the matter with her clothes, and he not warn her of the consequences, so he stopped and told her that she must excuse him, a perfect stranger, for mentioning her petticoat, but the fact was that it was coming off.
MYSTERY OF A WOMAN’S CLOTHES!
By this time the woman was mad. She bought a pistol and started for the depot, firmly resolved to kill the first man that molested her. She did not meet anybody until she arrived at the Junction, and she sat down in the depot to rest before the train came.
Pierce, the hotel man, is one of the most noticin’ persons anywhere, and she hadn’t been seated a York minute before his eye caught the discrepancy in her apparel.
He tried to get the telegraph operator and the expressman to go and tell her about it, but they wouldn’t, so he went and took a seat near her.
“It is a warm day, madame,” said Pierce, looking at the red strip at the bottom of her dress.
She drew her pistol, cocked it, and pointed it at Pierce, who was trembling in every leg, and said:
“Look-a-here, you young cuss. I have had half a dozen grown persons down town tell me my petticoat was coming off, and I have stood it because I thought they were old enough to know what they were talking about, but when it comes to boys of your age coming around thinking they know all about women’s clothes it is too much, and the shooting is going to commence.”
Mr. Pierce made one bound and reached the door, and then got behind a white greyhound and waited for her to go away, which she soon did. As she was stepping on the car the conductor, Jake Sazerowski, said to her:
“Your apparel, madame, seems to be demoralized,” but she rushed into the car, and was seen no more.
Since then these gentlemen have all learned that the fashion calls for a red strip at the bottom of a dress, and they will make no more mistakes. But they were all serious enough, and their interference was prompted by pure kindness of heart, and not from any wicked thoughts.
[A NEW SPARKING SCHEME.]
A number of fathers who have daughters, have formed a society, the object of which is to charge young men who visit the girls, for meals, gas, wear and tear of furniture, etc. There has been so much sparking going on which did not mean business, that the organization has seemed necessary.
[EFFECTS OF MINERAL WATER.]
A woman from Milwaukee, stopping at Sparta for the summer, had a serious accident the other day. She had her dress pinned back so tight that the exclamation point where she was vaccinated on the left arm was plainly visible, and as she stooped over at the artesian well to dip up a cup full of physic, a little dog belonging to a lady from Pilot Knob took hold of her striped stocking and shook it, thinking it was a blue racer. The lady was overcome with heat and sank down on the damp ground, and the result was congestion of the dog, for when she got up she kicked that dog over the Court house and sprained her stocking. It is said that beautiful and healthful summer resort is fast filling up and everybody swears it is the most enjoyable place on the continent. It is certainly the cheapest for us La Crosse folks to go. We don’t know of a place where, for the money invested, one can have so much fun and get so much health. You can leave La Crosse at 5:45, and arrive at Sparta at 6:20, after a delightful ride of thirty miles, and you will enjoy a race, your train beating the Northwestern train, and running like lightning. If you have a pass, or sit on the hind platform, it will cost you nothing. You can walk down town, at small expense. You want to take supper before leaving home, if economy is what you are seeking in addition to health. Go to Condit, at the Warner House, and talk as though you were looking for a place to send your family, and he will hitch up and drive you all over town. Tell Doc. Nichols you never tried a Turkish bath, but that you are troubled with hypochondria and often wish you were dead, and that if you were sure the baths would help you, you would come down and take them regular. He will put you through for nothing, and give you a cigar. Then you can get a tooth pick at Condit’s and put your thumb under your vest and go to the springs and talk loud about railroad stocks and bonds and speculating in wheat. (It takes two to do it up right. Frank Hatch and the writer are going down some night to “do” the watering place). Then you can swell around till half past ten, and sneak off to the depot on foot and come home, and your pocket book will be just as empty as when you started, unless you get a subscriber, and you will have added bloom to your cheek, and had a high old time, and next winter you can talk about the delightful time you passed at Sparta last summer during the heated term.
Let’s get up a party and go down some night.
[WHAT THE COUNTRY NEEDS.]
What the country needs is a melon from which the incendiary ingredients have been removed. It seems to me that by proper care, when the melon is growing on the vines, the cholera morbus can be decreased, at least, the same as the cranberry has been improved, by cultivation. The experiment of planting homeopathic pills in the hill with the melon has been tried, but homeopathy, while perhaps good in certain cases, does not seem to reach the seat of disease in the watermelon. What I would advise, and the advice is free to all, is that a porous plaster be placed upon watermelons, just as they are begining to ripen, with a view to draw out the cholera morbus. A mustard plaster might have the same effect, but the porous plaster seems to me to be the article to fill a want long felt. If, by this means, a breed of watermelon can be raised that will not strike terror to the heart of the consumer, this agricultural address will not have been delivered in vain.
[THE MAN FROM DUBUQUE.]
Last week, a young man from the country west of here came in on the evening train and walked up to Grand avenue, with a fresh looking young woman hanging on to one handle of a satchel while he held the other. They turned into the Plankinton House, and with a wild light in his eye the man went to the book and registered his name and that of the lady with him.
While the clerk was picking out a couple of rooms that were near together, the man looked around at the colored man who had the satchel, and as the clerk said, “Show the gentleman to No 65 and the lady to 67,” he said, “Hold on, ’squire! One room will do.”
On being shown to the room, the bridegroom came right out with the bell boy and appeared at the office. Picking out a benevolent looking gentleman, with a good place to raise hair on his head, who was behind the counter, the groom said:
“Say, can a man enjoy religion in this house?”
Mr. White said a man could if he brought it with him. They had none on hand to issue out to guests, but they never interfered with those who had it when they arrived.
“Why,” says the manager of the house, “has anybody interfered with your devotions here?”
“No, not here,” said the man, wiping his forehead with a red handkerchief. “But they have at Dubuque. I’ll tell you how it was. I was married a couple of days ago, and night before last I put up at a Dubuque hotel. My wife never had been married before any at all, and she is timid, and thinks everybody is watching us, and making fun of us! She jumps at the slightest sound.
“Well, we went to our room in the afternoon, and she began to cry, and said if she wasn’t married she never would be the longest day she lived. I sort of put my arm around her, and was just telling her that everybody had to get married, when there was a knock on the door, and she jumped more than thirty feet.
“You see that finger. Well, a pin in her belt stuck clear through, and came near making me faint away. I held my finger in my mouth, and telling her the house was not on fire, I went to the door and there was a porter there who wanted to know if I wanted any more coal on the fire. I drove him away, and sat down in a big rocking chair with my wife in my lap, and was stroking her hair and telling her that if she would forgive me for marrying I never would do so again, and trying to make her feel more at home, when there came another knock at the door, and she jumped clear across the room and knocked over a water pitcher.
“This seal ring on my finger caught in her frizzes and I’ll be cussed if the whole top of her head didn’t come off. I was a little flurried and went to the door, and a chambermaid was there with an armful of towels and she handed me a couple and went off. My wife came into camp again, and began to cry and accuse me of pulling her hair, when I went up to her and put my arm around her waist, and was just going to kiss her, just as any man would be justified in kissing his wife under the circumstances, when she screamed murder and fell against the bureau.
“I looked around and the door had opened, and there was a colored man coming into the room with a kerosene lamp, and he chuckled and said he begged my pardon. Now, I am a man that don’t let my temper get away with me, but as it was three hours before dark I didn’t see what was the use of a lamp, and I told him to get out of there. Before 6 o’clock that evening there had been twenty raps at the door, and we got sick. My wife said she would not stay in that house for a million dollars. So we started for Milwaukee.
AN INTRUSIVE NIGGER.
“I tried to get a little sleep on the cars, but every little while a conductor would wake me up and roll me over in the seat to look at my ticket, and brakemen would run against my legs in the aisle of the car, and shout the names of stations till I was sorry I ever left home. Now, I want to have rest and quietude. Can I have it here?”
The manager told him to go to his room, and if he wanted any coal or ice water to ring for it, and if anybody knocked at his door without being sent for, to begin shooting bullets through the door. That settled it, and when the parties returned to Iowa they said this country was a mighty sight different from Dubuque.
[A PLEA FOR THE BULL HEAD.]
The late meeting of the State Fish Commissioners at Milwaukee was an important event, and the discussions the wise men indulged in will be valuable additions to the literature of the country, and future readers of profane history will rise up and call them blessed. It seems that the action of the Milwaukee common council in withdrawing the use of the water works from the commissioners, will put a stop to the hatching of whitefish. This is as it should be. The white fish is an aristocratic bird, that will not bite a hook, and the propagation of this species of fish is wholly in the interest of wealthy owners of fishing tugs, who have nets. By strict attention to business they can catch all the whitefish out of the lake a little faster than the State machine can put them in. Poor people cannot get a smell of whitefish. The same may be said of brook trout. While they will bite a hook, it requires more machinery to catch them than ordinary people can possess without mortgaging a house. A man has got to have a morocco book of expensive flies, a fifteen dollar bamboo jointed rod, a three dollar trout basket with a hole mortised in the top, a corduroy suit made in the latest style, top boots of the Wellington pattern, with red tassels in the straps, and a flask of Otard brandy in a side pocket. Unless a man is got up in that style, a speckled trout will see him in Chicago, first, and then it won’t bite. The brook trout is even more aristocratic than the whitefish, and should not be propagated at public expense.
But there are fish that should be propagated in the interest of the people. There is a species of fish that never looks at the clothes of the man who throws in the bait, a fish that takes whatever is thrown to it, and when once hold of the hook never tries to shake a friend, but submits to the inevitable, crosses its legs and says “Now I lay me,” and comes out on the bank and seems to enjoy being taken. It is a fish that is a friend of the poor, and one that will sacrifice itself in the interest of humanity. This is the fish that the State should adopt as its trade mark, and cultivate friendly relations with, and stand by. We allude to the bullhead.
The bullhead never went back on a friend. To catch the bullhead it is not necessary to tempt his appetite with porter house steak, or to display an expensive lot of fishing tackle. A pin hook, a piece of liver, and a cistern pole, is all the capital required to catch a bullhead. He lays upon the bottom of a stream or pond in the mud, thinking. There is no fish that does more thinking or has a better head for grasping great questions, or chunks of liver than the bullhead. His brain is large, his heart beats for humanity, and if he can’t get liver, a piece of a tin tomato can will make a meal for him. It is an interesting study to watch a boy catch a bullhead. The boy knows where the bullhead congregates, and when he throws in his hook it is dollars to buttons that “in the near future” he will get a bite. The bullhead is democratic in all its instincts. If the boy’s shirt is sleeveless, his hat crownless, and his pants a bottomless pit, the bullhead will bite just as well as though the boy is dressed in purple and fine linen, with knee breeches and plaid stockings. The bull head seems to be dozing—bulldozing we might say—on the muddy bottom, and a stranger might say that he would not bite. But wait. There is a movement of his continuation, and his cow-catcher moves gently toward the piece of liver. He does not wait to smell of it, and canvas in his mind whether the liver is fresh. It makes no difference to him. He argues that here is a family out of meat. “My country calls and I must go,” says the bullhead to himself, and he opens his mouth and the liver disappears.
It is not certain that the boy will think of his bait for half an hour, but the bullhead is in no hurry. He lays in the mud and proceeds to digest the liver. He realizes that his days will not be long in the land, or water, more properly speaking, and he argues if he swallows the bait and digests it before the boy pulls him out, he will be just so much ahead. Finally the boy thinks of his bait, and pulls it out, and the bullhead is landed on the bank, and the boy cuts him open to get the hook out. Some fish only take the bait gingerly, and are only caught around the selvage of the mouth, and they are comparatively easy to dislodge. Not so with the bullhead. He says if liver is a good thing you can’t have too much of it, and it tastes good all the way down. The boy gets down on his knees to dissect the bullhead, and get his hook, and it may be that the boy swears. It would not be astonishing, though he must feel, when he gets his hook out of the hidden recesses of the bullhead, like the minister that took up a collection and didn’t get a cent, though he expressed his thanks at getting his hat back. There is one drawback to the bullhead, and that is his horns. We doubt if a boy ever descended into the patent insides of a bullhead, to mine for Limerick hooks, that did not, before his work was done, run a horn into his vital parts. But the boy seems to expect it, and the bullhead enjoys it. We have seen a bullhead lay on the bank and become dry, and to all appearances dead to all that was going on, and when the boy sat down on him and got a horn in his elbow, and yelled murder, the bullhead would grin from ear to ear, and wag his tail as though applauding for an end core.
The bullhead never complains. We have seen a boy take a dull knife and proceed to follow a fish line down a bullhead from his head to the end of his subsequent anatomy, and all the time there would be an expression of sweet peace on the countenance of the bullhead, as though he enjoyed it. If we were preparing a picture representing “Resignation,” for a chromo to give to subscribers, and wished to represent a scene of suffering in which the sufferer was light hearted, and seemed to recognize that all was for the best, we should take for the subject a bullhead, with a boy searching with a knife for a long lost fish hook.
The bullhead is a fish that has no scales, but in lieu thereof is a fine India rubber skin, that is as far ahead of fiddle string material for strength and durability as possible. The meat of the bullhead is not as choice as that of the mackerel, but it fills up a stomach just as well, and the Sun insists that the fish commissioners shall drop the hatching of aristocratic fish and give the bullhead a chance. There’s millions in it.
[WHY NOT RAISE WOLVES?]
You devote a good deal of time and labor to the raising of sheep, and what do you get for it. The best sheep cannot lay more than eight pounds of wool in a season, and even if you get fifty cents a pound for it, you have not got any great bonanza. Now, the state encourages the raising of wolves, by offering a bounty of ten dollars for a piece of skin off the head of each wolf. It does not cost any more to raise a wolf than it does to raise a sheep, and while sheep rarely raise more than two lambs a year, a pair of good wolves are liable to raise twenty young ones in the course of a year, if it is a good year for wolves. In addition to the encouragement offered by the state, many counties give as much more, so that one wolf scalp will bring more money than five sheep. You will readily see that our wise legislators are offering inducements to you that you should be thankful for. You can establish a wolf orchard on any farm, and with a pair of good wolves to start on, there is millions in it.
[THE SUDDEN FIRE-WORKS AT RACINE.]
One of those Fourth of July accidents that are always looked for but seldom occur, happened at Racine, Monday night, which struck terror to the hearts and other portions of the bodies of many eminent citizens, and that none were killed we can all thank Providence, who tempers the fire-works to the sweaty citizen in his shirt sleeves. The enterprizing citizens had contributed a large sum of money, which had been judiciously expended in all kinds of fire-works, and one side of the public square was given up to the display.
Thousands of citizens had gathered there, from city and country, and bright Roman candles shone o’er fair men and brave women, and sixteen thousand nine hundred and twelve hearts beat happy, while music arose with its voluptuous swell, and soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, or words to that effect. At least that was what a young fellow from Racine told us, who was here to see a specialist to have a splinter from a rocket stick removed from his ear.
A few pieces had been shot off, a few bunches of crackers had had their tails tied together and been hung over a wire clothes line, like cats, to fight it out, and the crowd was holding its breath for the next boom, when there was an explosion; the earth seemed to tremble, and the air was full of all kinds of fire-works. The whole supply of fire-works had become ignited, and were blowing off where they listeth, without regard to anybody’s feelings.
The crowd became panic stricken, and there never was another such a scene, and never will be until the last great day, when a few thousand people suddenly find that they have got into hell, by mistake, when they thought they were ticketed through to the other place. It was perfectly awful. Prominent citizens who usually display great pluck, became fearfully rattled.
A man named Martindale, a railroad man who weighs over two hundred pounds, was standing near a telegraph pole, and as the firing commenced he climbed up the pole as easy as a squirrel would climb a tree, and when it was over they had to get a fire ladder to get him down; as his pants had got caught over the glass telegraph knob, and he had forgotten the combination, and besides he said he didn’t want to take off his clothes up there and come down, even if it was dark, because it would be just his luck to have some one fire off a Roman candle when he got down.
MARTINDALE CLIMBS A POLE.
The Hon. Norton J. Field was another man who lost his nerve. He was explaining to some ladies one of the pieces that was to be fired off, which was an allegorical picture representing the revolution, when the whole business blew up. He thought at the time, that the explosion was in the programme, and was just reassuring the ladies, by telling them it reminded him of battle scenes he had witnessed when he was on the military committee in the assembly, when he noticed a girl near him whose polonaise had caught fire, and he rushed up to her, caught her by the dress, intending, with his cool hands, to put out the fire.
The girl felt some one feeling, as she supposed, for her pocket-book, and she started to run, yelling, “pickpocket,” and left the burning polonaise in Mr. Field’s hands. He blushed, and was about to explain to his lady friends how the best of us are liable to have our motives misconstrued, when somebody threw a box of four dozen of those large firecrackers right at his feet, and they were all on fire. Ten of them exploded at once, and he grabbed the polonaise in one hand and his burning coat tail in the other, and started west on a run.
The steward of the Gideon’s Band Club House, at Burlington, said he arrived there at daylight on the morning of the 5th, and he still held the pieces of dress, but the whole back of his coat was burned off, and the suspenders just held by a thread. He said the comet struck the earth at Racine, at 9:30 the night before, and knocked the town into the lake, and he and another fellow were all that escaped.
The narrowest escape was that of young Mr. Oberman. He is a small man, all except his heart and feet, and when the air began to fill with patriotic missiles, he started to run. On passing the News office he had to jump over an old coal stove that stood there, and while he was in the air, six feet from the sidewalk, a sky rocket stick passed through his coat tail and pinned him to the building, where he hung suspended, while other rocket sticks were striking all around him, Roman candle colored balls were falling on his unprotected head, etc. and one of these nigger chasers that run all over the ground, climbed up the side of the building and tried to get in his pants pocket.
Mr. Oberman begged Mr. Wright, the postmaster, to cut him down, but Mr. Wright, who was using both hands and his voice trying to disengage a package of pin-wheels from the back portion of his coat, which were on fire and throwing out colored sparks, said he hadn’t got time, as he was going down to the river to take a sitz bath for his health.
The man that keeps the hotel next door to the News office came out with a pail of water, yelled “fire,” and threw the water on Mr. Curt Treat’s head. Mr. Treat was very much vexed, and told the hotel man if he couldn’t tell the difference between an auburn haired young man and a pin-wheel, he’d better go and hire somebody that could. Friends of Mr. Treat say that he would be justified in going into the hotel and ordering a bottle of pop, and then refusing to pay for it, as the water took all the starch out of his shirt.
Those who saw the explosion say it was one of the most magnificent, yet awful and terrible sights ever witnessed, and the only wonder is that somebody was not hurt. What added to the terror of the scene was when they went to the artesian well to get water to put out the fire and found that the well had ceased flowing. On investigation they found that Mr. Sage, the assembly man, had crawled into the pipe.
By the way, Mr. Oberman finally got down from his terrible position by the aid of the editor of the Journal, to whom Mr. Oberman promised coal enough to run his engine for a year. Very few men displayed any coolness except Mr. Treat and Mr. Sage.
[LA CROSSE NEBECUDNEZZER WATER.]
It is the great ambition of our life to bring to the notice of the people of the world the curative powers of the La Crosse water, that all who may be suffering from any disease, however complicated, may be cured, and all men may become healthy, and women too, and doctors will have to go out harvesting. The La Crosse artesian well, was begun last fall, and completed as soon as the contractor found he couldn’t make any money at it. It was rumored that he struck granite, and in fact several little specks of granite were found in the stuff that come from the hole, but it is pretty generally believed now that the granite particles got in from the top, unknown to the contractor. The water came to within ten feet of the surface, and struck. It never would come any further, and the world would have remained in ignorance of its curative powers, only for Powers, who put in a hydraulic ram, and the blockade was broken, the water now flows to the surface, and all is well.
Attention was first called to the curative powers of the water, by a singular incident. A teamster whose duty it was to haul stone, was in the habit of stopping at the well to water his mules. One of the mules was in a sad state. He was blind in one eye, had a spavin, a ringbone, the heaves, his liver was torpid, his lungs were badly affected, and his friends feared that he was not long for the stone quarry. He had no family. Soon after the mule began to drink the water, the driver noticed a great change come over him. Previously he had seemed resigned to his fate, but latterly he was ambitious. One day while playfully mashing the mule over the head with a sled stake, the driver noticed that a new eye had grown in the place of the former cavity, and as the mule kicked him with more than his accustomed vigor, he noticed that the spavin and ring bone were gone, and the former plaintive melody of his voice gave place to a bray that resembled the whistle of the Alex. Mitchell. When it was known that the mule had been cured, others tried the water, men who had never drank it before, until to-day there are thousands who will testify to the benefits arising from its use. We could give the names of many who have been snatched from the grave—the La Crosse water is a regular body snatcher—but we will first give an analysis of the water.
Believing that the water was destined to play a prominent part in solving the great question of how to euchre death, we sent a quantity of it to the eminent Prof. Alonzo Brown, M.D.V.S. of Jefferson, Wis., with a letter of transmittal authorizing him to analyze it thoroughly, and give us the result, at our expense. The following is Prof. Brown’s analysis:
LABRATORY JEFFERSON LIVERY STABLE,
August 3, 1877.
Lieut. GEO. W. PECK,
4th Wis. Cavalry,
Dear Sir:
Yours of July 25th, received. I should have attended to the water before, but have had several cases of blind staggers in my barn, which has kept me busy. I have examined the water by every process known to science, and pronounce it bully. I took it apart at my leisure, and find that it contains to one U.S. washtub full, of 741 cubic inches, the following stuff:
| Chloride, of Sodium, (common salt) | 2 | sacks. |
| Chloride of Pilgarlic | 40,021 | grains. |
| Bicarbonate of erysipelas | 11,602 | grains. |
| Bicarbonate of pie plant | 2,071 | grains. |
| Blue pills | 21,011 | grains. |
| Bicarbonate of soda water (vanilla.) | 17,201 | grains. |
| Sulphate of Potasalager beer | 61,399 | grains. |
| Bicarbonate corrugated iron | 18,020 | grains. |
| Mustang Liniment | 240 | grains. |
| Boneset and summer savory | 10,210 | grains. |
| Dow's Liver Cure, (6 bottles for $1.) | 16,297 | grains. |
| Bromide of Alcock's Porous Plaster | 22,222 | grains. |
| Flouride of Pain Killer (for cucumbers,) | 055 | grains. |
| Paris green | 001 | grains. |
| Spruce gum and Vinegar Bitters | 075 | grains. |
In submitting this analysis permit me to say that I find traces of mock turtle soup, and India Rubber. I consider the La Crosse Nebecudnezzer water the most comprehensive water that I have ever analyzed, and I would recommend it for any disease that human beings or animals may have.
Very Respectfully,
ALONZO BROWN,
Prof. of Chemistry in Jefferson Livery stable, and late Veterinary Surgeon 4th Wis. Cavalry.
We have known Mr. Brown long and well, and his statement in regard to the water can be relied upon. Citizens should retain a copy of this analysis for future reference.
Mr. E.W. Keyes, of Madison, writing under date of August 1st, says: “The La Crosse water you sent me has caused an entire new crop of hair to grow upon my head. I had been bald for years, and offered five hundred dollars, for any medicine that would cause hair to grow. Enclosed find five hundred dollars, and send me more water. I want to try it on Murphey, of the Sentinel. I think it would be a good joke on Murphey.”
But wait till we get all the letters written from prominent men who have been cured.
[THE INFIDEL AND HIS SILVER MINE.]
It is announced in the papers that Colonel Ingersoll, the dollar-a-ticket infidel, has struck it rich in a silver mine, and is now worth a million dollars. Here is another evidence of the goodness of God. Ingersoll has treated God with the greatest contempt, called him all the names he could think of, called him a liar, a heartless wretch, and stood on a stump and dared God to knock a chip off his shoulder, and instead of God’s letting him have one below the belt and knocking seven kinds of cold victuals out of him, God gives him a pointer on a silver mine, and the infidel rakes in a cool million, and laughs in his sleeve, while thousands of poor workers in the vineyard are depending for a livelihood on collections that pan out more gun wads and brass pants buttons to the ton of ore than they do silver.
This may be all right, and we hope it is, and we don’t want to give any advice on anybody else’s business, but it would please Christians a good deal better to see that bold man taken by the slack of the pants and lifted into the poor house, while the silver he has had fall to him was distributed among the charitable societies, mission schools and churches, so a minister could get his salary and buy a new pair of trousers to replace those that he has worn the knees out of kneeling down on the rough floor to pray.
It is mighty poor consolation to the ladies of a church society to give sociables, ice creameries, strawberry festivals and all kinds of things to raise money to buy a carpet for a church or lecture room, and wash their own dishes than hear that some infidel who is around the country calling God a pirate and horse thief, at a dollar a head, to full houses, has miraculously struck a million dollar silver mine.
To the toiling minister who prays without ceasing, and eats codfish and buys clothes at a second hand store, it looks pretty rough to see Bob Ingersoll steered onto a million dollar silver mine. But it may be all right, and we presume it is. Maybe God has got the hook in Bob’s mouth, and is letting him play around the way a fisherman does a black bass, and when he thinks he is running the whole business, and flops around and scares the other fish, it is possible Bob may be reeled in, and he will find himself on the bottom of the boat with a finger and thumb in his gills, and a big boot on his paunch, and he will be compelled to disgorge the hook and the bait and all, and he will lay there and try to flop out of the boat, and wonder what kind of a game that is being played on him.
Everything turns out right some time, and from what we have heard of God, off and on, we don’t believe he is going to let no ordinary man, bald-headed and appoplectic, carry off all the persimmons, and put his fingers to his nose and dare the ruler of the universe to tread on the tail of his coat.
Bob Ingersoll has got the bulge on all the Christians now, and draws more water than anybody, but He who knows the sparrow’s fall has no doubt got an eye on the fat rascal, and some day will close two or three fingers around Bob’s throat, when his eyes will stick out so you can hang your hat on them, and he will blat like a calf and get down on his knees and say:
“Please, Mr. God, don’t choke so, and I will take it all back and go around and tell the boys that I am the almightiest liar that ever charged a dollar a head to listen to the escaping wind from a biown-up bladder. O, good God, don’t hurt me so. My neck is all chafed.”
And then he will die, and God will continue business at the old stand.
[THE LEGEND OF THE LAKE.]
Every noted place of resort has an Indian legend, and the first thing I did after getting my dinner was to look up the legendist. I wanted to hear how it was that the Indian had ceased to frequent this spot. So in looking for the boss legendist I struck Judge Lamoreaux, of Dodge county, who had been herewith a party of friends, Mr. Hayes, and Mr. Van Brunt, with all their wives. They had been searching for ferns and legends and they had a car load. The Judge had heard of the legend, and he took me one side, and with tears in his eyes related to me the horrible story just as he had received it from an Indian named O’Flanegan, who sells relics in the shape of rye. If I can control my emotion long enough to write it, it will be a big thing for history.
HIAWASAMANTHA, THE DUSKY DAUGHTER OF THE GOLDEN WEST.
Years ago an Indian chief who lived in a dog tent and caught rattlesnakes for a side show, had a daughter, a beautiful maiden, about the color and odor of smoked bacon, and she wore a red blanket cut biased, and a tilter, under a polonaise made over from her last year’s striped silk. She was the belliest squaw in the hills, and took the premium at all the county fairs, and she could shoot a deer equal to any buck Indian. Her name was Hiawasamantha, and she had two lovers, a Frenchman and a young Indian. In figuring up the returns there was some doubt as to who was elected, so the father of the girl decided to go behind the returns, and settle it by a commission. There was an eagle’s nest half way up the rocks, with young eagles in it, and the old chief said that the one that got there first and brought him a young eagle, should have the squaw. The Frenchman climbed up the back stairs and got there ahead of the Indian, when the young Indian drew from his trousers leg a bar of railroad iron and drove it to the hilt in the breast of the Frenchman, not, however, till the Frenchman had drawn from his pistol pocket a 300 ton Krupp gun and sent a solid shot weighing 280 pounds crashing into the skull of the Indian, and both rolled to the bottom of the bluff, dead. Dr. Hall, of Baraboo, was called, and he probed for the ball, but could not find it, and neither could he get the bar of railroad iron out of the Frenchman, and so they were buried on the spot where now stands the Cliff House. The squaw looked around for another fellow, but they all had other engagements, the excursion train having arrived from La Crosse, and so she went up on a crag and said, “Big Injun me,” and jumped off and was dashed into 1,347 pieces, and the wedding was broke up. Pieces of the squaw can now be found among the rocks, petrified, but retaining the odor of the ancient tribe. I got a piece of her, evidently a piece broken off her ear, which retains its shade perfectly, and will long be a reminder of my visit to Devil’s Lake. (P.S.—Disreputable parties are selling pieces of stuff purporting to be genuine remains of this beauteous maiden, but they are base imitations. None genuine unless the trade mark is stamped on them.)
[GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.]
The Geological Survey is being prosecuted as well as could be expected with the limited means at the hands of the searchers in the bowels of the earth. They have already found, I am informed, that the earth on which we live, and move, and have a being, is composed largely of dirt. The discovery of this fact is alone worth the price of admission. This great discovery, which will be of such value to the future historian, has only cost the state the insignificant sum of $8,280. Rather than remain in ignorance of this astonishing fact, I would willingly pay the money myself—out of the public treasury. It is rumored that parties employed by the State to dive down into the ground and bring up sand in their claws, have discovered symptoms that the world was at one time sick to its stomach, and threw up divers and sundry kinds of rocks and things, and there is a probability that lead ore may be discovered. This will be valuable to make bullets in case of a war with Oshkosh. In peace it is always best to prepare for war, and I trust you will lend your countenance to the able men who are investigating the Lower Silurian age.
[FOOLING WITH THE BIBLE.]
Reports from the stationers show that there is no demand at all for the revised edition of the Bible, and had it not been for the newspapers publishing the whole affair there would have been very few persons that took the trouble to even glance at it, and it is believed that not one reader of the daily papers in a hundred read any of the Bible, and not one in ten thousand read all of it which was published. Who originated this scheme of revising the Bible we do not know, but whoever it was made a miscue. There was no one suffering particularly for a revision of the Bible. It was good enough as it was. No literary sharp of the present day has got any license to change anything in the Bible.
Why, the cheeky ghouls have actually altered over the Lord’s Prayer, cut it biased, and thrown the parts about giving us this day our daily bread into the rag bag. How do they know that the Lord said more than he wanted to in that prayer? He wanted that daily bread in there, or He never would have put it in. The only wonder is that those revisers did not insert strawberry shortcake and ice cream in place of daily bread. Some of these ministers who are writing speeches for the Lord think they are smart. They have fooled with Christ’s sermon on the Mount until He couldn’t tell it if He was to meet it in the Chicago Times.
This thing has gone on long enough, and we want a stop put to it. We have kept still about the piracy that has been going on in the Bible because people who are better than we are have seemed to endorse it, but now we are sick of it, and if there is going to be an annual clerical picnic to cut gashes in the Bible and stick new precepts and examples on where they will do the most hurt, we shall lock up our old Bible where the critters can’t get at it and throw the first book agent down stairs head first that tries to shove off on to us one of these new-fangled, go-as-you-please Bibles, with all the modern improvements, and hell left out.
Now, where was there a popular demand to have hell left out of the Bible? Were there any petitions from the people sent up to this self-constituted legislature of pinchbeck ministers, praying to have hell abolished, and “hades” inserted? Not a petition. And what is this hades? Where is it? Nobody knows. They have taken away our orthodox hell, that has stood by us since we first went to Sunday school, and given us a hades. Half of us wouldn’t know a hades if we should see it dead in the road, but they couldn’t fool us any on hell.
No, these revisers have done more harm to religion than they could have done by preaching all their lives. They have opened the ball, and now, every time a second-class dominie gets out of a job, he is going to cut and slash into the Bible. He will think up lots of things that will sound better than some things that are in there, and by and by we shall have our Bibles as we do our almanacs, annually, with weather probabilities on the margins.
This is all wrong. Infidels will laugh at us, and say our old Bible is worn out, and out of style, and tell us to have our measure taken for a new one every fall and spring, as we do for our clothes. If this revision is a good thing, why won’t another one be better? The woods are full of preachers who think they could go to work and improve the Bible, and if we don’t shut down on this thing, they will take a hand in it. If a man hauls down the American flag, we shoot him on the spot; and now we suggest that if any man mutilates the Bible, we run an umbrella into him and spread it.
The old Bible just filled the bill, and we hope every new one that is printed will lay on the shelves and get sour. This revision of the Bible is believed to be the work of an incendiary. It is a scheme got up by British book publishers to make money out of pious people. It is on the same principle that speculators get up a corner on pork or wheat. They got revision, and printed Bibles enough to supply the world, and would not let out one for love or money. None were genuine unless the name of this British firm was blown in the bottle.
Millions of Bibles were shipped to this country by the firm that was “long” on Bibles, and they were to be thrown on the market suddenly, after being locked up and guarded by the police until the people were made hungry for Bibles.
The edition was advertised like a circus, and doors were to be opened at six o’clock in the morning. American publishers who wanted to publish the Bible, too, got compositors ready to rush out a cheap Bible within twelve hours, and the Britons, who were running the corner on the Word of God, called these American publishers pirates. The idea of men being pirates for printing a Bible, which should be as free as salvation. The newspapers that had the Bibles telegraphed to them from the east, were also pirates.
O, the revision is a three-card monte speculation; that is all it is.
[A BLACK BEAR AT ONALASKA.]
A black bear was brought into town for sale on Friday, having been killed by Tom Rand, near Onalaska. He killed it with a little rifle that didn’t look big enough to hurt a hen. If bears are so sociable as to come within sight of La Crosse to be killed, it will be a good excuse for husbands to stay at home nights.
[ANOTHER DEAD FAILURE.]
Again we are called upon to apologize to our readers for advertising what we had reason to expect would occur at the time advertised, but which failed to show up. We allude to the end of the world which was to have taken place last Sunday. It is with humility that we confess that we were again misled into believing that the long postponed event would take place, and with others we got our things together that we intended to take along, only to be compelled to unpack them Monday morning.
Now this thing is played out, and the next time any party advertises that the world will come to an end, we shall take no stock in it. And then it will be just our luck to have the thing come to an end, when we are not prepared. There is the worst sort of mismanagement about this business somewhere, and we are not sure but it is best to allow God to go ahead and attend to the closing up of earthly affairs, and give these fellows that figure out the end of all things with a slate and pencil the grand bounce.
It is a dead loss to this country of millions of dollars every time there is a prediction that the world will come to an end, because there are lots of men who quit business weeks beforehand and do not try to earn a living but go lunching around. We lost over fifteen dollars’ worth of advertising last week from people who thought if the thing was going up the flue on Sunday there was no use of advertising any more, and we refused twenty dollars’ worth more because we thought if that was the last paper we were going to get out we might as knock off work Friday and Saturday and go and catch a string of perch. The people have been fooled about this thing enough, and the first man that comes around with any more predictions ought to be arrested.
People have got enough to worry about, paying taxes, and buying strawberries and sugar, to can, without feeling that if they get a tax receipt the money will be a dead loss, or if they put up a cellar full of canned fruit the world will tip over on it and break every jar and bust every tin can.
Hereafter we propose to go right along as though the world was going to stay right side up, have our hair cut, and try and behave, and then if old mother earth shoots off into space without any warning we will take our chances with the rest in catching on to the corner of some passing star and throw our leg over and get acquainted with the people there, and maybe start a funny paper and split the star wide open.
[THE GLORIOUS FOURTH OF JULY.]
On this great day we are accustomed to leave our business to hired men, and burn with patriotism, and ginger pop, fill ourselves with patriotic ferver, and beer, shout the battle cry of freedom, and go home when the day is over with our eye-winkers burned off, and to sleep with a consciousness that a great duty has been performed, and that we have got bank notes to pay on the morrow. For three hundred and sixty-four days in the year our patriotism is corked up and wired down, and all we can do is to work, and acquire age and strength. On the 4th of July we cut the wire, the cork that holds our patriotism flies out, and we bubble and sparkle and steam, and make things howl. We hold in as long as we can, but when we get the harness off, and are turned into the pasture, we make a picnic of ourselves, with music all along the line.
[THE USES OF THE PAPER BAG.]
A First Ward man was told by his wife to bring home a quart of oysters on New Year’s night, to fry for supper. He drank a few prescriptions of egg nog, and then took a paper bag full of selects and started for home. He stopped at two or three saloons, and the bag began to melt, and when he left the last saloon the bottom fell out of the bag and the oysters were on the sidewalk.
SLIPPERY OYSTERS.
We will leave the man there, gazing upon the wreck, and take the reader to the residence where he is expected.
A red-faced woman is putting the finishing touches to the supper table, and wondering why her husband does not come with the oysters. Presently a noise as of a lead pencil in the key-hole salutes her ear, and she goes to the and opens it, and finds him taking the pencil out of the key-hole. Not seeing any oysters, she asks him if he has forgotten the oysters.
“Forgot noth(hic)ing,” says he.
He walks up to the table and asks for a plate, which is given him by the unsuspicious wife.
“Damsaccident you ever(hic)see,” said the truly good man, as he brought his hand out of his overcoat pocket, with four oysters, a little smoking tobacce, and a piece of cigar-stub.
“Slipperysoystersev(hic)er was,” said he, as he run his hands down in the other pocket, bringing up five oysters, a piece of envelope, and a piece of wire that was used as a bail to the pail.
“Got all my pock(hic)ets full,” said he, as he took a large oyster out of his vest pocket. Then he began to go down in his pants pocket, and finding a hole in it, he said:
“Six big oys(hic)ters gone down my trousers leg. S’posi’ll find them in my boot,” and he sat down to pull off his boot, when the lady took the plate of oysters and other stuff into the kitchen and threw them in the swill, and then she put him to bed, and all the time he was trying to tell her how the bag busted just as he was in front of All Saints Ca(hic)thedral.
[THE UNIVERSALIST BATH.]
Mr. E.H. Lane is canvassing the city for the Universalist Bath. We don’t know why it should be called a “Universalist Bath,” as it more nearly resembles a Baptist Bath, as we remember it. The bath is a queer thing, consisting of an India rubber hop sack, fastened to an immense ox bow. The ends are placed on to chairs, the water put in, and you get in and hippotamus and take a complete bath from Dan to Beersheba in a tea cup full of water.
[KILLING BIG GAME.]
The conductors on the St. Paul railroad are most all good sports with a shot gun. There is Howard and Clason, and Russell, who never tire of talking of the millions of chickens, ducks, wild turkeys and so forth that they have killed. They have tried to get Conductor Green interested in field sports, but he always said the game was not big enough for him. He said he had his opinion men that would surround a little chicken with spike tailed dogs, and then kill it and call it sport. What he wanted was big game. Nothing less than a bear would do him. Last week the owners of the cinnamon bear that was brought down from the Yellowstone, decided to have it killed, and some one told them to get Green to kill it, as he was an old bear hunter from the Rocky Mountains. Green said he was rusty on bears, not having had a tussel with a grizzly in several years, but if they couldn’t get anybody else to chance the bear he would make hash of it. So they went down to the ice house where the bear was. Green said he didn’t want anybody to go in with him, because they might get hurt. He put on Clason’s hunting suit, took a carving knife in his teeth and a revolver in his hand, and went in and looked the bear in the eye. The bear knew Green meant business, and he began to feel around for his ticket. The conductor advanced to within eleven feet of the bear when all at once the animal sprang at him, growling and showing his teeth. Green’s first impulse was to pull the bell rope, and order the cuss to get out of the ice house, but he saw the bear coming through the air towards him, and there was not four hours to lose, so he drew the revolver, took aim at the bear’s left eye, and pulled. There was a puff of smoke, and the bear fell lifeless at his feet. Placing the animal in his game sack, he wiped the blood from his knife and said to some men who stood outside, their faces ashy pale: “Always shoot bears in the left eye.” The men were pleased to see him come out alive and they shook him warmly by the hand. The other conductors, the shooters, are jealous of Green, and they are telling how he killed the bear by going up in the loft of the ice house and falling on him, and one conductor says Green shot the bear with a crow bar through a knot hole. Another said the bear had all four of his legs tied and that a dose of poison was administered through a syringe, attached to a pole, while another says that the bear died from fright. All these stories are the result of jealousy. The bear was killed just as we say, and there are few men that would tackle him—that is, few men aside from conductors.
[THE MULE NOT THE EAGLE.]
The bird that should have been selected as the emblem of our country, the bird of patience, forbearance, perseverance, and the bird of terror when aroused, is the mule. There is no bird that combines more virtues to the square foot than the mule. With the mule emblazoned on our banners, we should be a terror to every foe. We are a nation of uncomplaining hard workers. We mean to do the fair thing by everybody. We plod along, doing as we would be done by. So does the mule. As a nation we occasionally stick our ears forward, and fan flies off of our forehead. So does the mule. We allow parties to get on and ride as long as they behave themselves. So do does the mule. But when any nation sticks spurs in our flanks, and tickles our heels with a straw, we come down stiff-legged in front, our ears look to the beautiful beyond, our voice is cut loose, and is still for war, and our subsequent end plays the snare drum on anything that gets in reach of us, and strikes terror to the hearts of all tyrants. So does the mule.
[OUR BLUE-COATED DOG POISONERS.]
“Papa, the cruel policeman has murdered little Gip? He sneaked up and frowed a nice piece of meat to Gip, and Gip he eated it, and fanked the policeman with his tail, and runned after him and teased for more, but the policeman fought Gip had enough, and then Gip stopped and looked sorry he had eaten it, and pretty soon he laid down and died, and the policeman laughed and went off feeling good. If Dan Sheenan was the policeman any more he wouldn’t poison my dog, would he, pa?”
The above was the greeting the bald-headed Sun man received on Thursday, and a pair of four-year-old brown eyes were full enough of tears to break the heart of a policeman of many years’ standing, and the little, crushed master of the dead King Charles spaniel went to sleep sobbing and believing that policemen were the greatest blot upon the civilization of the nineteenth century.
Here was a little fellow that had from the day he first stood on his feet after the scarlet fever had left him alive, been allowing his heart to become entwined with love for that poor little dog. For nearly a year the dog had been ready to play with the child when everybody else was tired out, and never once had the dog been cross or backed out of a romp, and the laughter and the barking has many a time been the only sound of happiness in the neighborhood.
If the boy slept too long after dinner, the dog went and rooted around him as much as to say, “Look a here, Mr. Roy, you can’t play this on your partner any longer. You get up here and we will have a high old time, and don’t you forget it.” And pretty soon the sound of baby feet and dog’s toe nails would be heard on the stairs, and the circus would commence.
If the dog slept too long of an afternoon, the boy would hunt him out, take hold of his tail with one hand and an ear with the other, and lug him into the parlor, saying, “Gip, too much sleep is what is ruining the dogs in this country. Now, brace up and play horse with me.” And then there was fun.
Well, it is all over; but while we write there is a little fellow sleeping on a tear-stained pillow, dreaming, perhaps of a heaven where the woods are full of King Charles’ spaniel dogs, and a door-keeper stands with a club to keep out policemen. And still we cannot blame policemen—it is the law that is to blame—the wise men who go to the legislature, and make months with one day too much, pass laws that a dog shall be muzzled and wear a brass check, or he is liable to go mad. Statistics show that not one dog in a million ever goes mad and that they are more liable to go mad in winter than in summer; but several hundred years ago somebody said that summer was “dog days,” and the law makers of this enlightened nineteenth century still insist on a wire muzzle at a season of the year when a dog wants air and water, and wants his tongue out.
So we compel our guardians of the peace to go around assassinating dogs. Men, who as citizens, would cut their hands off before they would injure a neighbor’s property, or speak harsh to his dog, when they hire out to the city must stifle all feelings of humanity, and descend to the level of Paris scavengers. We compel them to do this. If they would get on their ears and say to the city of Milwaukee, “We will guard your city, and protect you from insult, and die for you if it becomes necessary; but we will see you in hades before we go around assassinating dogs,” we as people, would think more of them, and perhaps build them a decent station house to rest in.
[A HOT BOX AT A PICNIC.]
An Oshkosh young man started for a picnic in a buggy with two girls, and when they got half way they got a hot box to the hind wheel of the buggy, and they remained there all the afternoon pouring water on the wheel, missing the picnic. There is nothing that will cause a hot box in a buggy so quick as going to a picnic with girls. Particularly is this the case when one has two girls. No young man should ever take two girls to a picnic. He may think one cannot have too much of a good thing, and that he holds over the most of the boys who have only one girl, but before the picnic is over he will note the look of satisfaction on the faces of the other boys as they stray off in the vernal shade, and he will look around at his two girls as though his stomach was overloaded. We don’t care how attractive the girls are, or how enterprising a boy he is, or how expansive or far-reaching a mind he has, he cannot do justice to the subject if he has two girls. There will be a certain clashing of interests that no young boy in his goslinghood, as most boys are when they take two girls to a picnic, has the diplomacy to prevent. Now, this may seem a trifling thing to write about and for a great pious paper to publish, but there is more at the bottom of it than is generally believed. If we start the youth of the land out right in the first place they are all right, but if they start out by taking two girls to a picnic, their whole lives are liable to become acidulated, and they will grow up hating themselves. If a young man is good natured and tries to do the fair thing, and a picnic is got up, and the rest of the boys are liable to play it on him. There is always some old back number of a girl who has no fellow, who wants to go, and the boys, after they all get girls and buggies engaged, will canvass among themselves to see who shall take this extra girl, and it always falls to the good-natured young man. He says of course there is room for three in the buggy. Sometimes he thinks may be this old girl can be utilized to drive the horse, and then he can converse with his own sweet girl with both hands, but in such a moment as ye think not, he finds out that the extra girl is afraid of horses, dare not drive, and really requires some holding to keep her nerves quiet. The young man begins to realize by this time that life is one great disappointment. He tries to drive with one hand, and consoles his good girl, who is a little cross at the turn affairs have taken, with the other, but it is a failure, and finally his good girl says she will drive, and then he has to put an arm around them both, which will give more or less dissatisfaction the best way you can fix it. If we had a boy that didn’t seem to have any more sense than to make a hat rack of himself to hang girls on in a buggy, we should labor with him, and tell him of the agonies we had experienced in youth, when the boys palmed off two girls on us to take to a country picnic, and we believe we can do no greater favor to the young men who are just entering the picnic of life than to impress upon them the importance of doing one thing at a time, and doing it well. Start right at first, and life will be one continued picnic buggy ride, but if your mind is divided in youth you will always be looking for hot boxes and annoyance.
THE OLD BACK NUMBER GIRL.
[CAMP MEETINGS IN THE DARK OF THE MOON.]
A Dartford man, who has been attending a camp meeting at that place, inquires of the Brandon Times why it is that camp meetings are always held when the moon does not shine. The Times man gives it up and refers the question to the Sun. We give it up.
It does not seem as though managers of camp meetings deliberately consult the almanac in order to pick out a week for camp meeting in the dark of the moon, though such meetings are always held when the moon is of no account. If they do, then there is a reason for it. It is well known that pickerel bite best in the dark of the moon, and it is barely possible that sinners “catch on” better at that time.
There may be something in the atmosphere, in the dark of the moon, that makes a camp meeting more enjoyable. Certainly brethren and sisterin’ can mingle as well if not better when there is no glaring moon to molest and make them afraid, and they can relate their experience as well as though it was too light.
The prayers of the righteous avail as much in the darkness of the closet as they do in an exposition building, with an electric light, and as long as sinners will do many things which they ought not to do, and undo many things that they never ought to have done, the dark of the moon is probably the most healthy.
[PALACE CATTLE CARS.]
The papers are publishing accounts of the arrival east of a train of palace cattle cars, and illustrating how much better the cattle feel after a trip in one of these cars, than cattle did when they made the journey in the ordinary cattle cars.
As we understand it the cars are fitted up in the most gorgeous manner, in mahogany and rosewood, and the upholstering is something perfectly grand, and never before undertaken except in the palaces of the old world.
As you enter the car there is a reception room, with a few chairs, a lounge and an ottoman, and a Texas steer gently waves you to a seat with his horns, while he switches off your hat with his tail. If there is any particular cow, or steer, or ox, that you wish to see, you give your card to the attendant steer, and he excuses himself and trots off to find the one you desire to see. You do not have long to wait, for the animal courteously rises, humps up his or her back, stretches, yawns, and with the remark, “the galoot wants to interview me, probably, and I wish he would keep away,” the particular one sought for comes to the reception room and puts out its front foot for a shake, smiles and says, “Glad you came. Was afraid you would let us go away and not call.”
Then the cow or steer sits down on its haunches and the conversation flows in easy channels. You ask how they like the country, and if they have good times, and if they are not hard worked, and all that; and they yawn and say the country is splendid at this season of the year, and that when passing along the road they feel as though they would like to get out in some meadow, and eat grass and switch flies.
The steer asks the visitor if he does not want to look through the car, when he says he would like to if it is not too much trouble. The steer says it is no trouble at all, at the same time shaking his horns as though he was mad, and kicking some of the gilding off of a stateroom.
“This,” says the steer who is doing the honors, “is the stateroom occupied by old Brindle, who is being shipped from St. Joseph, Mo. Brindle weighs 1,600 on foot—Brindle, get up and show yourself to the gentleman.”
Brindle kicks off the red blanket, rolls her eyes in a lazy sort of way, bellows, and stands up in the berth, humps up her back so it raises the upper berth and causes a heifer that is trying to sleep off a debauch of bran mash, to kick like a steer, and then looks at the interviewer as much as to say, “O, go on now and give us a rest.” Brindle turns her head to a fountain that is near, in which Apollinaris water is flowing, perfumed with new mown hay, drinks, turns her head and licks her back, and stops and thinks, and then looking around as much as to say, “Gentlemen, you will have to excuse me,” lays down with her head on a pillow, pulls the coverlid over her and begins to snore.
The attendant steer steers the visitor along the next apartment, which is a large one, filled with cattle in all positions. One is lying in a hammock, with her feet on the window, reading the Chicago Times article on Oleomargarine, or Bull Butter, at intervals stopping the reading to curse the writer, who claims that oleomargarine is an unlawful preparation, containing deleterious substances.
A party of four oxen are seated around a table playing seven-up for the drinks, and as the attendant steer passes along, a speckled ox with one horn broken, orders four pails full of Waukesha water with a dash of oatmeal in it, “and make it hot,” says the ox, as he counts up high, low, jack and the game.
Passing the card players the visitor notices an upright piano, and asks what that is for, and the attendant steer says they are all fond of music, and asks if he would not like to near some of the cattle play. He says he would, and the steer calls out a white cow who is sketching, and asks her to warble a few notes. The cow seats herself on her haunches on the piano stool, after saying she has such a cold she can’t sing, and, besides, has left her notes at home in the pasture. Turning over a few leaves with her forward hoof, she finds something familiar, and proceeds to walk on the piano keys with her forward feet and bellow, “Meet me in the slaughter house when the due bill falls,” or something of that kind, when the visitor says he has got to go up to the stock yards and attend a reception of Colorado cattle, and he lights out.
We should think these parlor cattle cars would be a success, and that cattle would enjoy them very much. It is said that parties desiring to charter these cars for excursions for human beings, can be accommodated at any time when they are not needed to transport cattle, if they will give bonds to return them in as good order as they find them.
[GEORGE WASHINGTON.]
He could not tell a lie, George couldn’t. Washington, it is probable, never knew what it was to stow away a schooner of beer, and history makes no mention that he ever, on any pretext, eat limberger cheese. At least no mention was made of it in his farewell address. He never was President of a savings bank. Washington never lectured. He never edited a newspaper. He could not tell a lie at the rates editors charge. No he was a good man, with none of the small vices that are so prevalent these days.
[BROKE UP A PRAYER MEETING.]
A few months ago the spectacle presented itself of a very respectable lady of the Seventh ward wearing a black eye. There never was a case of ante-election that was any more perfect than the one this lady carried.
We have seen millions of black eyes in our time, some of which were observed in a mirror, but we never saw one that suggested a row any plainer than the one the Seventh ward lady wore. It was cut biased, that being the latest style of black eye, and was fluted with purple and orange shade, and trimmed with the same. Probably we never should have known about the black eye had not the lady asked, as she held her hand over one eye, if there was any truth in the story that a raw oyster would cure a black eye. She came to us as an expert.
THE LADY OF THE SEVENTH WARD.
When we told her that a piece of beef-steak was worth two oysters she uncovered the eye. It looked as though painted by one of the old masters.
Rather than have anybody think she had been having a row, she explained how it happened. She was sitting with her husband and little girl in the parlor, and while, the two were reading the little one disappeared. The mother went to the girl’s room on tiptoe, to see if she was asleep. She found the girl with all her dolls on the floor having a dolls’ prayer meeting. She had them all down on their knees and would let them pray one at a time, then sing. One of the dolls that squeaked when pressed on the stomach was the leader of the singing, and the little girl bossed the job. There was one old maid doll that the little girl seemed to be disgusted with because the doll talked too much, and she would say:
“There, Miss, you sit down and let some of the other sisters get in a word edgeways. Sister Perkins, won’t you relate your experience?”
After listening to this for a few moments the mother heard the girl say:
“Now, Polly, you pass the collection plate, and no one must put in lozengers, and then we will all go to the dancing school.”
The whole thing was so ridiculous that the mother attempted to rush down stairs three at a time, to have her husband come up to the prayer meeting, when she stubbed herself on a stair rod, and—well, she got the black eye on the journey down stairs, though what hit her she will probably never know. But she said when she began to roll down stairs she felt in her innermost soul as though she had broke up that prayer meeting prematurely.
[THE DOG LAW.]
The dog law is as foolish as the anti-treating law, and if it were not enforced, no harm would be done. Our legislators have to pass about so many laws anyway, and we should use our judgment about enforcing them.
[LUNCH ON THE CARS.]
There is nothing that so gives a man away as to open a satchel and take out a lunch. I have been riding on the cars and have made the acquaintance of people who would listen to my stories, and take in every word as gospel truth. They would seem to hang on my words with pleasure, and be apparently glad they had become acquainted with one who combined so many graces of mind and person, and they would gather around so as not to miss a single lie that I might tell. And yet when I took a paper parcel out of my valise and opened up a lunch, consisting of bread and onions, and sausage and sweitzer cheese, they would draw coldly away from me and sit in the farther part of the car, and appear never to have known me.