The drummer wiped the perspiration from his face with a coffee sack and told Van he would give him a million dollars if he never would let the house in Milwaukee know about it, and he chucked the things back in. “What is this?” said Van, as he held up a pair of giddy looking affairs that no drummer ever wore on his own person. “Don't ask me” says the drummer, “I am not a married man.”
He took the satchel and went to Milton on the next train. The girl had opened the satchel which fell to her in the division to show her room-mate how to make a stitch in crochet, and when the brown sugar, coffee, tea, rice, bottles of syrup, maccaroni and a pack of cards came in sight, she fairly squealed. Along after dinner the drummer called and asked for an exchange, and they exchanged, and it was hard to tell which blushed the most.
THE NAUGHTY BUT NICE CHURCH CHOIR.
You may organize a church choir and think you have got it down fine, and that every member of it is pious and full of true goodness, and in such a moment as you think not you will find that one or more of them are full of the old Harry, and it will break out when you least expect it. There is no more beautiful sight to the student of nature than a church choir. To see the members sitting together, demure, devoted and pious looking, you think that there is never a thought enters their mind that is not connected with singing anthems, but sometimes you get left.
There is one church choir in Milwaukee that is about as near perfect as a choir can be. It has been organized for a long time, and has never quarreled, and the congregation swears by it. When the choir strikes a devotional attitude it is enough to make an ordinary christian think of the angel band above, only the male singers wear whiskers, and the females wear fashionable clothes.
You would not think that this choir played tricks on each other during the sermon, but sometimes they do. The choir is furnished with the numbers of the hymns that are to be sung, by the minister, and they put a book mark in the book at the proper place. One morning they all got up to sing, when the soprano turned pale as an ace of spades dropped out of her hymn book, the alto nearly fainted when a queen of hearts dropped at her feet, and the rest of the pack was distributed around in the other books. They laid it onto the tenor, but he swore, while the minister was preaching, that he didn't know one card from another.
One morning last summer, after the tenor had been playing tricks all Spring on the rest of the choir, the soprano brought a chunk of shoemaker's wax to church. The tenor was arrayed like Solomon, in all his glory, with white pants, and a Seymour coat. The tenor got up to see who the girl was who came in with the old lady, and while he was up the soprano put the shoemakers' wax on the chair, and the tenor sat down on it. They all saw it, and they waited for the result. It was an awful long prayer, and the church was hot, the tenor was no iceberg himself, and shoemakers' wax melts at ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit.
The minister finally got to the amen, and read a hymn, the choir coughed and all rose up. The chair that the tenor was in stuck to him like a brother, and came right along and nearly broke his suspenders. It was the tenor to bat, and as the great organ struck up he pushed the chair off of his person, looked around to see if he had saved his pants, and began to sing, and the rest of the choir came near bursting. The tenor was called out on three strikes by the umpire, and the alto had to sail in, and while she was singing the tenor began to feel of first base to see what was the matter. When he got his hand on the shoemaker's warm wax his heart smote him, and he looked daggers at the soprano, but she put on a pious look and got her mouth ready to sing “Hold the Fort.”
Well, the tenor sat down on a white handkerchief before he went home, and he got home without anybody seeing him, and he has been, as the old saying is, “laying” for the soprano ever since to get even.