A FEMALE KNIGHT OF PYTHIAS.
A woman of Bay City, Michigan, disguised herself as a man and clerked in a store for a year, and then applied for membership in the Knights of Pythias and was initiated. During the work of the third degree her sex was discovered. It seems that in the third degree they have an India rubber rat and a celluloid snake, which run by clockwork inside, and which were very natural indeed. The idea is to let them run at the candidate for initiation to see if he will flinch. When the snake ran at the girl she kept her nerve all right, but when the rat tried to run up her trousers leg she grabbed her imaginary skirts in both hands and jumped onto a refrigerator that was standing near, (which is used in the work of the fourth degree) and screamed bloody murder. The girl is a member of the order, however, and there is no help for it. This affair may open the eyes of members of secret societies and cause them to investigate. One lodge here, we understand, takes precaution against the admission of women by examining carefully the feet of applicants. If the feet are cold enough to freeze ice cream the candidate is black-balled.
THE TELESCOPE FISH-POLE CANE.
There is one thing we want to set our face against and try and break up, and that is the habit of young and middle aged persons going fishing on Sunday, when going on the Summer excursions to the country. The devil, or some other inventor, has originated a walking-stick that looks as innocent as a Sunday school teacher, but within it is a roaring lion, in the shape of a fish-pole. We have watched young fellows, and know their tricks. Sunday morning they say to their parents that they have agreed to go over on the West Side and attend early mass with a companion, just to hear the exquisite music, and, by the way, they may not be home to dinner. And they go from that home, with their new cane, looking as pious as though they were passing the collection plate. When they get around the corner they whoop it up for the depot, and shortly they are steaming out into the country. They have a lot of angleworms in an envelope in their vest pockets, and a restaurant colored man, who has been seen the night before, meets them at the depot and hands them a basket of sandwiches with a bottle sticking out.
Arriving at the summer resort, they go to the bank of the lake and take a boat ride, and when well out in the lake they begin to unbosom the cane. Taking a plug out of the end of it, they pull out a dingus and three joints of fish-pole come out, and they tie a line on the end, put an angle worm on the hook, and catch fish. That is the kind of “mass” they are attending.
At night the train comes back to town, and the sunburnt young men, with their noses peeled, hand a basket to the waiting colored man, which smells of fish, and they go home and tell their parents they went out to Forest Home Cemetery in the afternoon, and the sun was awful hot. The good mother knows she smells fish on her son's clothes, but she thinks it is some new kind of perfumery, and she is silent.
An honest up-and-up fish-pole is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, if the fishing is good, but one of these deceptive, three carde monte, political fish-poles, that shoves in and appears to be a cane, is incendiary, and ought to be suppressed. There ought to be a law passed to suppress a fish-pole that passes in polite society for a cane, and in such a moment as ye think not is pulled out to catch fish. There is nothing square about it, and the invention of that blasted stem winding fish-pole is doing more to ruin this country than all the political parties can overcome. If there was a law to compel the owners of those wailking-sticks to put a sign on their canes, “This is a fish-pole,” there would be less canes taken on these Sunday excursions in summer.
Look not upon the walking-stick when it is hollow, and pulls out, for at last it giveth thee away, young fellow.