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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Peck's Sunshine, by George W. Peck
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Peck's Sunshine
+       Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun,
+       Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882
+
+Author: George W. Peck
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2008 [EBook #25491]
+Last Updated: October 5, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PECK'S SUNSHINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+PECK'S SUNSHINE
+
+By George W. Peck
+
+Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, Milwaukee, Wis.,
+Generally Calculated to Throw Sunshine Instead of Clouds on the Faces
+of Those Who Read Them.
+
+Belford, Clarke & Co. - 1882.
+
+
+
+
+“NOT GUILTY.”
+
+Gentlemen of the Jury: I stand before you charged with an attempt to
+“remove” the people of America by the publication of a new book, and I
+enter a plea of “Not Guilty.” While admitting that the case looks strong
+against me, there are extenuating circumstances, which, if you will
+weigh them carefully, will go far towards acquitting me of this dreadful
+charge. The facts are that I am not responsible, I was sane enough up to
+the day that I decided to publish this book and have been since; but
+on that particular day I was taken possession of by an unseen power--a
+Chicago publisher-who filled my alleged mind with the belief that the
+country demanded the sacrifice, and that there would be money in it. If
+the thing is a failure, I want it understood that I was instigated by
+the Chicago man; but if it is a success, then, of course, it was an
+inspiration of my own.
+
+The book contains nothing but good nature, pleasantly told yarns, jokes
+on my friends; and, through it all, there is not intended to be a line
+or a word that can cause pain or sorrow-nothing but happiness.
+
+Laughter is the best medicine known to the world for the cure of many
+diseases that mankind is subject to, and it has been prescribed with
+success by some of our best practitioners. It opens up the pores, and
+restores the circulation of the blood, and the despondent patient that
+smiles, is in a fair way to recovery. While this book is not recommended
+as an infallible cure for consumption, if I can throw the patient into
+the blues by the pictures, I can knock the blues out by vaccinating with
+the reading matter.
+
+To those who are inclined to look upon the bright side of life, this
+book is most respectfully dedicated by the author.
+
+GEO. W. PECK. Milwaukee, Wis.,
+
+March, 1882.
+
+
+
+
+PECK'S SUNSHINE.
+
+
+
+
+FEMALE DOCTORS WILL NEVER DO.
+
+A St. Louis doctor factory recently turned out a dozen female doctors.
+As long as the female doctors were confined to one or two in the whole
+country, and these were experimental, the _Sun_ held its peace, and did
+not complain; but now that the colleges are engaged in producing female
+doctors as a business, we must protest, and in so doing will give a few
+reasons why female doctors will not prove a paying branch of industry.
+
+In the first place, if they doctor anybody it must be women, and
+three-fourths of the women had rather have a male doctor. Suppose these
+colleges turn out female doctors until there are as many of them as
+there are male doctors, what have they got to practice on?
+
+A man, if there was nothing the matter with him, might call in a female
+doctor; but if he was sick as a horse--and when a man is sick he is
+sick as a horse--the last thing he would have around would be a female
+doctor. And why? Because when a man wants a female fumbling around him
+he wants to feel well. He don't want to be bilious, or feverish, with
+his mouth tasting like cheese, and his eyes bloodshot, when a female is
+looking over him and taking an account of stock.
+
+Of course these female doctors are all young and good looking, and if
+one of them came into a sick room where a man was in bed, and he had
+chills, and was as cold as a wedge, and she should sit up close to the
+side of the bed, and take hold of his hand, his pulse would run up to
+a hundred and fifty and she would prescribe for a fever when he had
+chilblains. Then if he died she could be arrested for malpractice. O,
+you can't fool us on female doctors.
+
+A man who has been sick and had male doctors, knows just how he would
+feel to have a female doctor come tripping in and throw her fur lined
+cloak over a chair, take off her hat and gloves, and throw them on a
+lounge, and come up to the bed with a pair of marine blue eyes, with a
+twinkle in the corner, and look him in the wild, changeable eyes, and
+ask him to run out his tongue. Suppose he knew his tongue was coated so
+it looked like a yellow Turkish towel, do you suppose he would want to
+run out five or six inches of the lower end of it, and let that female
+doctor put her finger on it, to see how it was furred? Not much! He
+would put that tongue up into his cheek, and wouldn't let her see it for
+twenty-five cents admission.
+
+We have all seen doctors put their hands under the bed-clothes and feel
+a man's feet to see if they were cold. If a female doctor should do
+that, it would give a man cramps in the legs.
+
+A male doctor can put his hand on a man's stomach, and liver, and lungs,
+and ask him if he feels any pain there; but if a female doctor should do
+the same thing it would make a man sick, and he would want to get up and
+kick himself for employing a female doctor. O, there is no use talking,
+it would kill a man.
+
+Now, suppose a man had heart disease, and a female doctor should want
+to listen to the beating of his heart. She would lay her left ear on his
+left breast, so her eyes and rosebud mouth would be looking right in
+his face, and her wavy hair would be scattered all around there, getting
+tangled in the buttons of his night shirt. Don't you suppose his heart
+would, get in about twenty extra beats to the minute? You bet! And
+she would smile--we will bet ten dollars she would smile--and show her
+pearly teeth, and her ripe lips would be working as though she were
+counting the beats, and he would think she was trying to whisper to him,
+and----
+
+Well, what would he be doing all this time? If he was not dead yet,
+which would be a wonder, his left hand would brush the hair away from
+her temple, and kind of stay there to keep the hair away, and his right
+hand would get sort of nervous and move around to the back of her head,
+and when she had counted the heart beats a few minutes and was raising
+her head, he would draw the head up to him and kiss her once for luck,
+if he was as bilious as a Jersey swamp angel, and have her charge it in
+the bill; and then a reaction would set in, and he would be as weak as
+a cat, and she would have to fan him and rub his head till he got over
+being nervous, and then make out her prescription after he got asleep.
+No; all of a man's symptoms change when a female doctor is practicing on
+him, and she would kill him dead.
+
+The _Sun_ is a woman's rights paper, and believes in allowing women to
+do anything that they can do as well as men, and is in favor of paying
+them as well as men are paid for the same work, taking all things into
+consideration; but it is opposed to their trifling with human life,
+by trying to doctor a total stranger. These colleges are doing a great
+wrong in preparing these female doctors for the war path, and we desire
+to enter a protest in behalf of twenty million men who could not stand
+the pressure.
+
+
+
+
+CROSSMAN'S GOAT.
+
+Mr. Crossman, of Marshall street, is a man who was once a boy himself,
+if his memory serves him, and no boy of his is going to ask him for
+anything that is in his power to purchase and be refused. But when
+his boy asked him to buy a goat Mr. Crossman felt hurt. It was not
+the expense of the goat that he looked at, but he never had felt that
+confidence in the uprightness of the moral character of a goat that he
+wanted to feel.
+
+A goat he always associated in his mind with a tramp, and he did not
+feel like bringing among the truly good children of the neighborhood a
+goat. He told his boy that he was sorry he had lavished his young and
+tender affections on a goat, and hoped that he would try and shake off
+the feeling that his life's happiness would be wrecked if he should
+refuse to buy him a goat. The boy put his sleeve up over his eyes and
+began to shed water, and that settled it.
+
+Mr. Crossman's religion is opposed to immersion, and when the infant
+baptism began his proud spirit was conquered, and he told the boy
+to lead on and he would buy the goat. They went over into the Polack
+settlement and a Countess there, who takes in washing, was bereaved of
+the goat, while Mr. Crossman felt that he was a dollar out of pocket.
+
+Now that he thinks of it, Mr. Crossman is confident that the old lady
+winked as he led the goat away by a piece of clothes line, though at the
+time he looked upon the affair as an honorable business transaction. If
+he had been buying a horse he would have asked about the habits of the
+animal, and would probably have taken the animal on trial. But it never
+occurred to him that there was any cheating in goats.
+
+The animal finally pulled Mr. Crossman home, at the end of the clothes
+line, and was placed in a neighbor's barn at eventide to be ready for
+the morning's play, refreshed. About 6 o'clock in the morning, Mr.
+Crossman was looking out of his window when he saw the neighboring lady
+come out of the barn door head first, and the goat was just taking its
+head away from her polonaise in a manner that Mr. Crossman considered,
+with his views of propriety, decidedly impolite.
+
+Believing there was some misunderstanding, and that the goat was
+jealous of a calf that was in the barn, and that the matter could be
+satisfactorily explained to the goat, Mr. Crossman put the other leg in
+his trousers, took a cistern pole and went to the front. The goat saw
+him coming, and rushed out into the yard and stood up on its hind feet
+and gave the grand hailing sign of distress, and as Mr. Cross-man turned
+to see if any of the neighbors were up, he felt an earthquake strike
+him a little below where he had his suspenders tied around his body. Mr.
+Crossman repeated a portion of the beautiful Easter service and climbed
+up on an ash barrel, where he stood poking the goat on the ear with the
+cistern pole, when Mr. Crombie, who lives hard by. and who had come out
+to split some kindling wood, appeared on the scene.
+
+Mr. Crombie is a man who grasps a situation at once, and though he is a
+man who deliberates much on any great undertaking, when he saw the lady
+behind the coal box, and Mr. Crossman on the ash barrel, he felt that
+there was need of a great mind right there, and he took his with him
+over the fence, in company with a barrel stave and a hatchet. He told
+Crossman that there was only one way to deal with a goat, and that was
+to be firm and look him right in the eye. He said Sep. Wintermute, at
+Whitewater, once had a goat that used to drive the boys all around, but
+he could do anything with him, by looking him in the eye.
+
+He walked toward the goat, with “his eyes sot,” and Mr. Crossman says
+one spell he thought, by the way the goat looked sheepish, that Crombie
+was a regular lion tamer, but just as he was about to paralyze the
+animal, Mr. Crombie caught the strings of his drawers, which were
+dragging on the ground, in the nails of a barrel hoop, and as he stooped
+down to untangle them the goat kicked him with his head, at a point
+about two chains and three links in a northwesterly direction from the
+small of his back. Crombie gave a sigh, said, “I die by the hand of an
+assassin,” and jumped up on a wagon, with the barrel stave and hatchet,
+and the hoop tangled in his legs.
+
+The goat had three of them treed, and was looking for other worlds
+to conquer, when Mr. Nowell, who was out for a walk, saw the living
+statues, and came in to hear the news. Mr. Crossmair said he didn't know
+what had got into the goat, unless it was a tin pail or a lawn mower
+that was in the barn, but he was evidently mad, and he advised Mr.
+No-well to go for the police.
+
+Nowell said a man that had raised cub bears had no right to be afraid of
+a goat. He said all you wanted to do, in subduing the spirit of animals,
+was to gain their confidence. He said he could, in two minutes, so win
+the affections of that goat that it would follow him about like a dog,
+and he went up and stroked the animal's head, scratched its ear, and
+asked them if they could not see they had taken the wrong course with
+the goat. He said a goat was a good deal like a human being. You could
+coax, but you could not drive. “Come, Billy,” said he, as he moved off,
+snapping his fingers.
+
+It is Mr. Nowell's unbiased opinion that Billy _did_ come. Not that he
+saw Billy come, but he had a vague suspicion, from a feeling of numbness
+some two feet from the base of the brain, that William had arrived
+in that immediate vicinity, and while he was recalling his scattered
+thoughts and feeling for any pieces of spine that might have become
+detached from the original column, Billy came again and caught three of
+Mr. Nowell's fingers in the pile driver. That was talk enough between
+gentlemen, and Mr. Nowell got his back against a fence and climbed up on
+top backwards.
+
+When he caught his breath he said that was the worst shock he ever
+experienced since he fell off the step ladder last summer. He said he
+had rather break a bear to ride any time.
+
+At this point Mr. Crombie espied a letter carrier on the other side of
+the street, and called him over. He told the letter carrier if he would
+step into the yard and drive the goat in the barn they would all unite
+in a petition to have the salaries of letter carriers raised. There is
+no class of citizens more accommodating than our letter carriers, and
+this one came in and walked up to the goat and pushed the animal with
+his foot.
+
+“This goat seems tame enough,” said he, turning around to speak to Mr.
+Crossman. His words had not more than vaporized in the chill air before
+the goat had planted two trip hammer blows into the seat of government,
+and the letter carrier went into the barn, fell over a wheelbarrow, and
+the letters from his sack were distributed in a box stall.
+
+It was a beautiful sight to look upon, and they would have been there
+till this time had it not been that the Countess happened to come along
+gathering swill, and the party made up a purse of three dollars for her
+if she would take the goat away.
+
+She took a turnip top from her swill pail, offered it to the goat, and
+the animal followed her off, bleating and showing every evidence of
+contentment, and the gentlemen got down from the positions they had
+assumed, and they shook hands and each took a bloody oath that he would
+not tell about it, and they repaired to their several homes and used
+arnica on the spots where the goat had kicked them.
+
+The only trouble that is liable to arise out of this is that the
+postmaster threatens to commence an action against Crossman for
+obstructing the mails.
+
+
+
+
+A MEAN TRICK.
+
+Probably the meanest trick that was ever played on a white man was
+played in Milwaukee, and the fact that there is no vigilance committee
+there is the only reason the perpetrators of the trick are alive. A
+business man had just purchased a new stiff hat, and he went into a
+saloon with half a dozen of his friends to fit the hat on his head. They
+all took beer, and passed the hat around so all could see it. One of the
+meanest men that ever held a county office went to the bar tender and
+had a thin slice of Limburger cheese cut off, and when the party were
+looking at the frescoed ceiling through beer glasses this wicked person
+slipped the cheese under the sweat leather of the hat, and the man put
+it on and walked out.
+
+The man who owned the hat is one of your nervous people, who is always
+complaining of being sick, and who feels as though some dreadful disease
+is going to take possession of him and carry him off. He went back to
+his place of business, took off his hat and laid it on the table, and
+proceeded to answer some letters. He thought he detected a smell, and,
+when his partner asked him if he didn't feel sick, he said he believed
+he did. The man turned pale and said he guessed he would go home. He met
+a man on the sidewalk who said the air was full of miasma, and in the
+street car a man who sat next to him moved away to the end of the car,
+and asked him if he had just come from Chicago. The man with the hat
+said he had not, when the stranger said they were having a great deal of
+smallpox there, and he guessed he would get out and walk, and he pulled
+the bell and jumped off. The cold perspiration broke out on the forehead
+of the man with the new hat, and he took it off to wipe his forehead,
+when the whole piece of cheese seemed to roll over and breathe, and the
+man got the full benefit of it, and came near fainting away.
+
+He got home and his wife met him and asked him what was the matter? He
+said he believed mortification had set in, and she took one whiff as he
+took off his hat, and said she should think it had. “Where did you get
+into it?” said she. “Get into it?” said the man, “I have not got into
+anything, but some deadly disease has got hold of me, and I shall not
+live.” She told him if any disease that smelled like that had got hold
+of him and was going to be chronic, she felt as though he would be a
+burden to himself if he lived very long. She got his clothes off, soaked
+his feet in mustard water, and he slept. The man slept and dreamed that
+a smallpox flag was hung in front of his house and that he was riding in
+a butcher wagon to the pest house.
+
+The wife sent for a doctor, and when the man of pills arrived she told
+him all about the case. The doctor picked up the patient's new hat,
+tried it on and got a sniff. He said the hat was picked before it was
+ripe. The doctor and the wife held a postmortem examination of the hat,
+and found the slice of Limberger. “Few and short were the prayers
+they said.” They woke the patient, and, to prepare his mind for the
+revelation that was about to be made, the doctor asked him if his
+worldly affairs were in a satisfactory condition. He gasped and said
+they were. The doctor asked him if he had made his will. He said he had
+not, but that he wanted a lawyer sent for at once. The doctor asked him
+if he felt as though he was prepared to shuffle off. The man said he had
+always tried to lead a different life, and had tried to be done by the
+same as he would do it himself, but that he might have made a misdeal
+some way, and he would like to have a minister sent for to take an
+account of stock. Then the doctor brought to the bedside the hat, opened
+up the sweat-leather, and showed the dying man what it was that smelled
+so, and told him he was as well as any man in the city.
+
+The patient pinched himself to see if he was alive, and jumped out of
+bed and called for his revolver, and the doctor couldn't keep up with
+him on the way down town. The last we saw of the odoriferous citizen
+he was trying to bribe the bar-tender to tell him which one of those
+pelicans it was that put that slice of cheese in his hat-lining.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+The Sun is in receipt of an invitation to attend the opening of a new
+hotel in an Iowa city, but it will be impossible to attend. We remember
+one Iowa hotel which we visited in 1869, when the Wisconsin editors
+stopped there on the way back from Omaha,--the time when a couple of bed
+bugs took Uncle David Atwood up on the roof and were going to throw him
+off, and they would have done it, only a party of cockroaches took his
+part and killed the bed bugs.
+
+Sam Ryan will remember how there was a crop of new potatoes growing on
+the billiard room floor in the dirt, that were all blossomed out; and
+Charley Seymour can tell how he had to argue for an hour to convince the
+colored cook that the peculiar smell of the scrambled eggs was owing to
+some of them being rotten. There were four waiters to a hundred guests,
+and it was a sight long to be remembered to see Mrs. Seymour and Mrs.
+Atwood carry their broiled chicken back to the kitchen and pick
+the feathers off, while good Uncle McBride, of Sparta, got into an
+altercation over his fried fish because the fish had not been scaled;
+where it was said the only thing that was not sour was the vinegar,
+and where the only thing that was not too small was the bill, and where
+every room smelled like a morgue, and the towels in the rooms had not
+taken a bath since 1827.
+
+At this hotel the proprietor would take a guest's napkin to wipe his
+nose, and the barefooted, waiter girl would slip up on the rare-done
+fried egg spilled on the dining-room floor, and wipe the yolk off her
+dress on a guest's linen coat tail. That is all we want of a hotel in
+that place.
+
+Not many months ago there was a meeting of ministers in Wisconsin, and
+after the holy work in which they were engaged had been done up to the
+satisfaction of all, a citizen of the place where the conference was
+held invited a large number of them to a collation at his house. After
+supper a dozen of them adjourned to a room up stairs to have a quiet
+smoke, as ministers sometimes do, when they got to talking about old
+times, when they attended school and were boys together, and _The Sun_
+man, who was present, disguised as a preacher, came to the conclusion
+that ministers were rather human than otherwise when they are young.
+
+One two-hundred pound delegate with a cigar between his fingers, blew
+the smoke out of the mouth which but a few hours before was uttering a
+supplication to the Most High to make us all good, punched a thin elder
+in the ribs with his thumb and said: “Jim, do you remember the time
+we carried the cow and calf up into the recitation room?” For a moment
+“Jim” was inclined to stand on his dignity, and he looked pained, until
+they all began to laugh, when he looked around to see if any worldly
+person was present, and satisfying himself that we were all truly good,
+he said: “You bet your life I remember it. I have got a scar on my shin
+now where that d--blessed cow hooked me,” and he began to roll up his
+trousers leg to show the scar. They told him they would take his word,
+and he pulled down his pants and said:
+
+“Well, you see I was detailed to attend to the calf, and I carried the
+calf up stairs, assisted by Bill Smith--who is now preaching in Chicago;
+got a soft thing, five thousand a year, and a parsonage furnished, and
+keeps a team, and if one of those horses is not a trotter then I am no
+judge of horse flesh or of Bill, and if he don't put on an old driving
+coat and go out on the road occasionally and catch on for a race with
+some worldly-minded man, then I am another. You hear me--well, I never
+knew a calf was so heavy, and had so many hind legs. Kick! Why, bless
+your old alabaster heart, that calf walked all over me, from Genesis to
+Revelations. And say, we didn't get much of a breeze the next morning,
+did we, when we had to clean out the recitation room?”
+
+A solemn-looking minister, with red hair, who was present, and whose
+eyes twinkled some through the smoke, said to another:
+
+“Charlie, you remember you were completely gone on the professor's niece
+who was visiting there from Poughkeepsie? What become of her?”
+
+Charlie put his feet on the table, struck a match on his trousers, and
+said:
+
+“Well, I wasn't gone on her, as you say, but just liked her. Not too
+well, you know, but just well enough. She had a color of hair that I
+could never stand--just the color of yours, Hank--and when she got
+to going with a printer I kind of let up, and they were married. I
+understand he is editing a paper somewhere in Illinois, and getting
+rich. It was better for her, as now she has a place to live, and does
+not have to board around like a country school ma'am, as she would if
+she had married me.” A dark-haired man, with a coat buttoned clear
+to the neck, and a countenance like a funeral sermon, with no more
+expression than a wooden decoy duck, who was smoking a briar-wood pipe
+that he had picked up on a what-not that belonged to the host, knocked
+the ashes out in a spittoon, and said:
+
+“Boys, do you remember the time we stole that three-seated wagon and
+went out across the marsh to Kingsley's farm, after watermelons?”
+
+Four of them said they remembered it well enough, and Jim said all he
+asked was to live long enough to get even with Bill Smith, the Chicago
+preacher, for suggesting to him to steal a bee-hive on the trip. “Why,”
+ said he, “before I had got twenty feet with that hive, every bee in it
+had stung me a dozen times. And do you remember how we played it on
+the professor, and made him believe that I had the chicken-pox? O,
+gentlemen, a glorious immortality awaits you beyond the grave for lying
+me out of that scrape.”
+
+The fat man hitched around uneasy in his chair and said they all seemed
+to have forgotten the principal event of that excursion, and that was
+how he tried to lift a bull dog over the fence by the teeth, which had
+become entangled in a certain portion of his wardrobe that should not be
+mentioned, and how he left a sample of his trousers in the possession
+of the dog, and how the farmer came to the college the next day with
+his eyes blacked, and a piece of trousers cloth done up in a paper, and
+wanted the professor to try and match it with the pants of some of the
+divinity students, and how he had to put on a pair of nankeen pants and
+hide his cassimeres in the boat house until the watermelon scrape blew
+over and he could get them mended.
+
+Then the small brunette minister asked if he was not entitled to some
+credit for blacking the farmer's eyes. Says he: “When he got over the
+fence and grabbed the near horse by the bits, and said he would have the
+whole gang in jail, I felt as though something had got to be done, and
+I jumped out on the other side of the wagon and walked around to him and
+put up my hands and gave him 'one, two, three' about the nose, with my
+blessing, and he let go that horse and took his dog back to the house.”
+
+“Well,” says the red haired minister, “those melons were green, anyway,
+but it was the fun of stealing them that we were after.”
+
+At this point the door opened and the host entered, and, pushing the
+smoke away with his hands, he said: “Well, gentlemen, are you enjoying
+yourselves?”
+
+They threw their cigar stubs in the spittoon, the solemn man laid the
+brier wood pipe where he got it, and the fat man said:
+
+“Brother Drake, we have been discussing the evil effects of indulging
+in the weed, and we have come to the conclusion that while tobacco is
+always bound to be used to a certain extent by the thoughtless, it is
+a duty the clergy owe to the community to discountenance its use on all
+possible occasions. Perhaps we had better adjourn to the parlor, and
+after asking divine guidance take our departure.”
+
+After they had gone the host looked at his cigar box, and came to
+the conclusion that somebody must have carried off some cigars in his
+pocket.
+
+
+
+
+AN ARM THAT IS NOT RELIABLE.
+
+A young fellow about nineteen, who is going with his first girl, and who
+lives on the West Side, has got the symptoms awfully. He just thinks
+of nothing else but his girl, and when he can be with her,--which is
+seldom, on account of the old folks,--he is there, and when he cannot be
+there, he is there or thereabouts, in his mind. He had been trying for
+three months to think of something to give his girl for a Christmas
+present, but he couldn't make up his mind what article would cause
+her to think of him the most, so the day before Christmas he unbosomed
+himself to his employer, and asked his advice as to the proper article
+to give. The old man is baldheaded and mean. “You want to give her
+something that will be a constant reminder of you?” “Yes,” he said,
+“that was what was the matter.” “Does she have any corns?” asked the
+old wretch. The boy said he had never inquired into the condition of her
+feet, and wanted to know what corns had to do with it. The old man said
+that if she had corns, a pair of shoes about two sizes too small would
+cause her mind to dwell on him a good deal. The boy said shoes wouldn't
+do. The old man hesitated a moment, scratched his head, and finally
+said:
+
+“I have it! I suppose, sir, when you are alone with her, in the parlor,
+you put your arm around her waist; do you not, sir?”
+
+The young man blushed, and said that was about the size of it.
+
+“I presume she enjoys that part of the discourse, eh?”
+
+The boy said that, as near as he could tell, by the way she acted, she
+was not opposed to being held up.
+
+“Then, sir, I can tell you of an article that will make her think of
+you in that position all the time, from the moment she gets up in the
+morning till she retires.”
+
+“Is there any attachment to it that will make her dream of me all
+night?” asked the boy.
+
+“No, sir! Don't be a hog,” said the bad man.
+
+“Then what is it?”
+
+The old man said one word, “Corset!”
+
+The young man was delighted, and he went to a store to buy a nice
+corset.
+
+“What size do you want?” asked the girl who waited on him.
+
+That was a puzzler. He didn't know they came in sizes. He was about to
+tell her to pick out the smallest size, when he happened to think of
+something.
+
+“Take a tape measure and measure my arm; that will just fit.”
+
+The girl looked wise, as though she had been there herself, found that
+it was a twenty-two inch corset the boy wanted, and he went home and
+wrote a note and sent it with the corset to the girl. He didn't hear
+anything about it till the following Sunday, when he called on her. She
+received him coldly, and handed him the corset, saying, with a tear in
+her eye, that she had never expected to be insulted by him. He told her
+he had no intention of insulting her; that he could think of nothing
+that would cause her to think of the gentle pressure of his arm around
+her waist as a corset, but if she felt insulted he would take his leave,
+give the corset to some poor family, and go drown himself.
+
+He was about to go away, when she burst out crying, and sobbed out the
+following words, wet with salt brine:
+
+“It was v-v-v-very thoughtful of y-y-you, but I _couldn't feel it!_ It
+is f-f-four sizes too b-b-big! Why didn't you get number eighteen? You
+are silent, you cannot answer, enough!”
+
+They instinctively found their way to the sofa; mutual explanations
+followed; he measured her waist again; saw where he had made a mistake
+by his fingers lapping over on the first turn, and he vowed, by the
+beard of the prophet, he would change it for another, if she had not
+worn it and got it soiled. They are better now.
+
+
+
+
+BOUNCED FROM CHURCH FOR DANCING.
+
+The Presbyterian synod at Erie, Pa., has turned a lawyer named Donaldson
+out of the church. The charge against him was not that he was a lawyer,
+as might be supposed, but that he had danced a quadrille. It does not
+seem to us as though there could be anything more harmless than dancing
+a cold-blooded quadrille. It is a simple walk around, and is not even
+exercise. Of course a man can, if he chooses, get in extra steps enough
+to keep his feet warm, but we contend that no quadrille, where they only
+touch hands, go down in the middle, and alamand left, can work upon a
+man's religion enough to cause him to backslide.
+
+If it was this new “waltz quadrille” that Donaldson indulged in, where
+there is intermittent hugging, and where the head gets to whirling, and
+a man has to hang on to his partner quite considerable, to keep from
+falling all over himself, and where she looks up fondly into his eyes
+and as though telling him to squeeze just as hard as it seemed necessary
+for his convenience, we should not wonder so much at the synod hauling
+him over the coals for cruelty to himself, but a cold quadrille has no
+deviltry in it.
+
+We presume the wicked and perverse Mr. Donaldson will join another
+church that allows dancing judiciously administered, and may yet get to
+heaven ahead of the Presbyterian synod, and he may be elected to some
+high position there, as Arthur was here, after the synod of Hayes and
+Sherman had bounced him from the Custom House for dancing the great
+spoils walk around.
+
+It is often the case here, and we do not know why it may not be in
+heaven, that the ones that are turned over and shook up, and the dust
+knocked out of them, and their metaphorical coat tail filled with boots,
+find that the whirligig of time has placed them above the parties
+who smote them, and we can readily believe that if Donaldson gets
+a first-class position of power, above the skies, he will make it
+decidedly warm for his persecutors when they come up to the desk with
+their grip sacks and register and ask for a room with a bath, and a
+fire escape. He will be apt to look up at the key rack and tell them
+everything is full, but they can find pretty fair accommodations at
+the other house, down at the Hot Springs, on the European plan, by Mr.
+Devil, formerly of Chicago.
+
+
+
+
+POLICE SEARCHING WOMEN.
+
+A NOVEL SCENE IN MILWAUKEE POLICE COURT.
+
+There is a movement on foot to provide for lady attendants at the Police
+Station, so that when a woman is arrested, and it is necessary to search
+her for concealed weapons, or money or incendiary documents, that duty
+can be performed by a person of the same sex as the prisoner. The _Sun_
+is anxious that this new departure be adopted at once, as it is very
+annoying for us to be called away from our business, every day or
+two, to aid the police--that is, of course, we are willing to be of
+assistance to anybody, but there _are_ times--anybody will admit that.
+
+The need of lady members of the police force was never illustrated any
+better than when the police arrested the women for passing counterfeit
+silver quarters, about six months ago. There was an oldish woman and a
+young woman, and when they were taken to the police office the reporters
+of the city papers were there, as usual, ready to lend a helping hand.
+The searching of the old lady was done in short order, by Detective
+Smith, who went about it in a business-like manner; but when it was time
+to search the young woman, and he looked into her soft, liquid eyes, and
+saw the emotion that she could not suppress, his heart failed him, and
+he sat down to write out his resignation. Tears came into his large,
+fawn-like eyes, and he called upon Mr. Northrop, correspondent of
+the Chicago _Times_, to assist him. Mr. Northrop had been inured to
+hardships, and knew much about the manner in which female persons
+conceal money, and being one of the “Willing Workers,” he told Mr. Smith
+that he would help him.
+
+The lady was told to remove her outward apparel, and to look steadily
+out of the window. She got behind a curtain-cord, and, in less time
+than it takes to write it, she threw her dress to the men, from her
+concealment behind the curtain-cord. The two men found a pocket in the
+dress, but to save them they couldn't find the pocket hole.. The dress
+was turned the other side out forty times, to find the pocket hole.
+
+Mr. Yenowine, of the _News_, who was present, said if they would hang
+the dress up on a hook he could find the pocket hole in the dark. He
+said there couldn't anybody fool him on finding a pocket hole in a
+dress.
+
+The dress was hung in a closet, and Mr. Yenowine proceeded on the
+arctic exploring expedition, while Mr. Northrop and the detective were
+examining a corset that the young woman had thrown on the floor, looking
+for bogus quarters. The _News_ man, with all his knowledge of dress
+pockets, came out unsuccessful, and said he must have lost the
+combination, and accused the janitor of giving it away. Mr. Smith
+suggested that they cut the pocket off, but the district attorney, Mr.
+McKenney, said it would be clearly against the law. He said that would
+be burglary. In the meantime the young woman had kept on shucking
+herself, until Mr. Neiman, of the _Sentinel_, became faint and went out
+on the steps to get a breath of fresh air, from which position he looked
+through the window.
+
+While the gentlemen were wondering if there were no rules of etiquette
+published that would make it easy and polite to search a woman for
+bogus two shilling pieces, the woman threw an article of female wearing
+apparel out on the floor for them to examine that fairly frightened
+them.
+
+“Merciful heavens,” said Mr. Yenowine, who was at that time a young and
+innocent person, unused to the ways of the world, “she has exploded.”
+
+Northrop poked it with his cane and said, “No, those always come off,”
+ and he put on an air of superiority over the boys which was annoying.
+
+“What, always?” said Mr. Neiman, who had his fingers up before his face,
+and was blushing as though he had intermittent fever.
+
+“Well, most always,” said Mr. Northrop, who had taken it up, and was
+examining it with a critic's eye.
+
+“I presume those are a bustle, are they not?” said innocent Yenowine.
+
+“Go aff, till the divil wid yer bushtle,” said Mr. Smith, “I know
+bether. Gintlemen, I am a plain shpoken man, and for me age have seen
+many thrying situations, but if this was me lasht day on earth I should
+shwear that was no more a bushtle than I am. Bushtles are never twins.”
+
+Mr. Harger, of the _Wisconsin_, who had hidden behind the stove pipe,
+was asked by Mr. Smith what he thought they were, whether it might
+not be an infernal machine. Mr. Harger said he had never known one
+to explode. He said when he was reporting legislative proceedings the
+members drew those with their stationery, from the superintendent of
+public property, but he had no idea what they did with them.
+
+At this point Mr. Aldrich, who had just come in, was asked to examine it
+and tell what it was. Mr. Aldrich took it up like a thing of life, and
+gazed upon it as though trying to recall something to his mind.
+Placing his finger, the one with the diamond ring on, to his corrugated
+forehead, he paused for a moment and finally gave his opinion that
+they were life preservers. He said that in Boston all women wore them,
+especially when they were out on excursions, or picnics. “See,” says
+he, as he hefted it, and made an indentation in it, which resumed its
+natural position as soon as he took his finger off, “it is filled with
+wind. Now, in case of accident, that would float a woman on top of water
+until she could be rescued. Let us demonstrate this matter by putting
+it on Mr. Boyington, of the _Sentinel_, and taking him to the morgue
+and placing him in the bath tub and he proceeded to fasten the life
+preserver around the calf of Mr. Boyington's leg.
+
+“Say, where are you putting it?” says Mr. B., as he struggled to keep
+from laughing right out. “You fellows don't know as much as Thompson's
+colt. If I know my own heart, and I think I do, a life preserver goes on
+under the vest.”
+
+Mr. Aldrich said he didn't pretend to know any more than anybody else.
+All he knew about these things personally was that he had seen them
+hanging up in stores, for sale, and one day when he was shopping he
+asked one of the lady clerks what it was hanging up there, and she said
+it was a life preserver, and asked him if he wanted one, and he told her
+no, he was only inquiring for a friend of his, who rode a bicycle. He
+didn't know but it might be something that went with a bicycle.
+
+All the time this discussion was going on we sat by the safe in the
+police office. We never were so sorry for a lot of innocent young men,
+never. The girl looked at us and winked, as much as to say, “Old man,
+why do you not come to the rescue of these young hoodlums, who don't
+know what they are talking about, and take the conceit out of them,” and
+so we explained to them, in the best language we could command, the uses
+and abuses of the garment they were examining, and showed them how it
+went on, and how the invention of it filled a want long felt by our
+American people. They all admitted that we were right, and that it was
+a counterfeit well calculated to deceive, and we believe now that the
+woman was convicted of counterfeiting mainly on the testimony of
+the reporters. However that may be, we desire to impress upon the
+authorities the importance of employing ladies at the police office
+to examine women who are arrested for crime. The police cannot always
+depend on having a newspaper man around.
+
+
+
+
+ABOUT HELL.
+
+An item is going the rounds of the papers, to illustrate how large the
+sun is, and how hot it is, which asserts that if an icicle a million
+miles long, and a hundred thousand miles through, should be thrust
+into one of the burning cavities of the sun, it would be melted in
+a hundredth part of a second, and that it would not cause as much
+“sissing” as a drop of water on a hot griddle.
+
+By this comparison we can realize that the sun is a big thing, and
+we can form some idea of what kind of a place it would be to pass the
+summer months. In contemplating the terrible heat of the sun, we are led
+to wonder why those whose duty it is to preach a hell hereafter, have
+not argued that the sun is the place where sinners will go to when they
+die.
+
+It is not our desire to inaugurate any reform in religious matters, but
+we realize what a discouraging thing it must be for preachers to preach
+hell and have nothing to show for it. As the business is now done, they
+are compelled to draw upon their imagination for a place of endless
+punishment, and a great many people, who would be frightened out of
+their boots if the minister could show them hell as he sees it, look
+upon his talk as a sort of dime novel romance.
+
+They want something tangible on which they can base their belief, and
+while the ministers do everything in their power to encourage sinners by
+picturing to them the lake of fire and brimstone, where boat-riding is
+out of the question unless you paddle around in a cauldron kettle, it
+seems as though their labors would be lightened if they could point to
+the sun, on a hot day in August, and say to the wicked man that unless
+he gets down on his knees and says his now I lay me, and repents, and is
+sprinkled, and chips in pretty flush towards the running expenses of
+the church, and stands his assessments like a thoroughbred, that he
+will wake up some morning, and find himself in the sun, blistered from
+Genesis to Revelations, thirsty as a harvest hand and not a brewery
+within a million miles, begging for a zinc ulster to cool his parched
+hind legs.
+
+Such an argument, with an illustration right on the blackboard of the
+sky, in plain sight, would strike terror to the sinner, and he would
+want to come into the fold _too_ quick. What the religion of this
+country wants, to make it take the cake, is a hell that the wayfaring
+man, though a democrat or a greenbacker, can see with the naked eye. The
+way it is now, the sinner, if he wants to find out anything about the
+hereafter, has to take it second handed, from some minister or deacon
+who has not seen it himself, but has got his idea of it from some other
+fellow who maybe dreamed it out.
+
+Some deacon tells a sinner all about the orthodox hell, and the sinner
+does not know whether to believe him or not. The deacon may have lied to
+the sinner some time in a horse trade, or in selling him goods, and beat
+him, and how does he know but the same deacon is playing a brace game on
+him on the hereafter, or playing him for a sardine.
+
+Now, if the people who advance these ideas of heaven or hell, had a
+license to point to the moon, the nice, cool moon, as heaven, which
+would be plausible, to say the least, and say that it was heaven, and
+prove it, and could prove that the sun was the other place, which looks
+reasonable, according to all we have heard about 'tother place, the moon
+would be so full there would not be standing room, and they would
+have to turn republicans away, while the sun would be playing to empty
+benches, and there would only be a few editors there who got in on
+passes.
+
+Of course, during a cold winter, when the thermometer was forty or fifty
+degrees below zero, and everybody was blocked in, and coal was up to
+seventeen dollars a ton, the cause of religion would not prosper as much
+as it would in summer, because when you talked to a sinner about leading
+a different life or he would go to the sun, he would look at his coal
+pile and say that he didn't care a continental how soon he got there,
+but these discouragements would not be any greater than some that the
+truly good people have to contend with now, and the average the year
+round would be largely in favor of going to the moon.
+
+The moon is very popular now, even, and if it is properly advertised as
+a celestial paradise, where only good people could get their work in,
+and where the wicked could not enter on any terms, there would be a
+great desire to take the straight and narrow way to the moon, and the
+path to the wicked sun would be grown over with sand burs, and scorched
+with lava, and few would care to take passage by that route. Anyway,
+this thing is worth looking into.
+
+
+
+
+UNSCREWING THE TOP OF A FRUIT JAR.
+
+There is one thing that there should be a law passed about, and that is,
+these glass fruit jars, with a top that screws on. It should be made a
+criminal offense, punishable with death or banishment to Chicago, for a
+person to manufacture a fruit jar, for preserving fruit, with a top that
+screws on. Those jars look nice when the fruit is put up in them, and
+the house-wife feels as though she was repaid for all her perspiration
+over a hot stove, as she looks at the glass jars of different berries,
+on the shelf in the cellar.
+
+The trouble does not begin until she has company, and decides to tap
+a little of her choice fruit. After the supper is well under way, she
+sends for a jar, and tells the servant to unscrew the top, and pour the
+fruit into a dish. The girl brings it into the kitchen, and proceeds to
+unscrew the top. She works gently at first, then gets mad, wrenches at
+it, sprains her wrist, and begins to cry, with her nose on the underside
+of her apron, and skins her nose on the dried pancake batter that is
+hidden in the folds of the apron.
+
+Then the little house-wife takes hold of the fruit can, smilingly, and
+says she will show the girl how to take off the top. She sits down
+on the wood-box, takes the glass jar between her knees, runs out her
+tongue, and twists. But the cover does not twist. The cover seems to
+feel as though it was placed there to keep guard over that fruit, and
+it is as immovable as the Egyptian pyramids. The little lady works until
+she is red in the face, and until her crimps all come down, and then she
+sets it down to wait for the old man to come home. He comes in tired,
+disgusted, and mad as a hornet, and when the case is laid before him, he
+goes out in the kitchen and pulls off his coat, and takes the jar.
+
+He remarks that he is at a loss to know what women are made for, anyway.
+He says they are all right to sit around and do crochet work, but
+whenever strategy, brain, and muscle are required, then they can't get
+along without a man. He tries to unscrew the cover, and his thumb slips
+off and knocks skin off the knuckle. He breathes a silent prayer and
+calls for the kerosene can, and pours a little of it into the crevice,
+and lets it soak, and then he tries again, and swears audibly.
+
+Then he calls for a tack-hammer, and taps the cover gently on one side,
+the glass jar breaks, and the juice runs down his trousers leg, on the
+table and all around. Enough of the fruit is saved for supper, and the
+old man goes up the back stairs to tie his thumb up in a rag, and change
+his pants.
+
+All come to the table smiling, as though nothing had happened, and the
+house-wife don't allow any of the family to have any sauce for fear they
+will get broken glass into their stomachs, but the “company” is provided
+for generously, and all would be well only for a remark of a little boy
+who, when asked if he will have some more of the sauce, says he “don't
+want no strawberries pickled in kerosene.” The smiling little hostess
+steals a smell of the sauce, while they are discussing politics, and
+believes she does smell kerosene, and she looks at the old man kind of
+spunky, when he glances at the rag on his thumb and asks if there is no
+liniment in the house. The preserving of fruit in glass jars is broken
+up in that house, and four dozen jars are down cellar to lay upon the
+lady's mind till she gets a chance to send some of them to a charity
+picnic. The glass jar fruit can business is played out unless a scheme
+can be invented to get the top off.
+
+
+
+
+BUTTERMILK BIBBERS.
+
+The immense consumption of buttermilk as a drink, retailed over the bars
+of saloons, has caused temperance people to rejoice. It is said that
+over two thousand gallons a day are sold in Milwaukee. There is
+one thing about buttermilk, in its favor, and that is, it does not
+intoxicate, and it takes the place of liquor as a beverage. A man may
+drink a quart of buttermilk, and while he may feel like a calf that has
+been sucking, and want to stand in a fence corner and bleat, or kick up
+his heels and run around a pasture, he does not become intoxicated and
+throw a beer keg through a saloon window.
+
+Another thing, buttermilk does not cause the nose to become red, and the
+consumer's breath does not smell like the next day after a sangerfest.
+The complexion of the nose of a buttermilk drinker assues a pale hue
+which is enchanting, and while his breath may smell like a baby that has
+nursed too much and got sour, the smell does not debar his entrance to a
+temperance society.
+
+
+
+
+AN ÆSTHETIC FEMALE CLUB BUSTED.
+
+The organization of the “Cosmos” Club, of Chicago women, for the purpose
+of discussing “æsthetic” business, ancient poetry and pottery ware,
+calls to mind the attempt to organize such a club here in Milwaukee.
+Our people here are too utterly full of business and domestic affairs
+to take to the “æsthetic” very generally, and the lady from Boston
+who tried to get up a class in the new wrinkle went away considerably
+disgusted. She called about fifty of our splendidest ladies together at
+the residence of one of them, and told them what the ladies of
+Eastern cities were doing in the study of higher arts. She elaborated
+considerably on the study of Norwegian literature, ceramics, bric-a-brac
+and so forth, and asked for an expression of the ladies present. One
+lady said she was willing to go into anything that would tend to elevate
+the tone of society, and make women better qualified for helpmates to
+their husbands, but she didn't want any Norwegian literature in hers.
+She said her husband ran for an office once and the whole gang of
+Norwegian voters went back on him and he was everlastingly scooped.
+
+The Boston lady held up her hands in holy horror, and was going to
+explain to the speaker how she was off her base, when another lady got
+up and said she wanted to take the full course or nothing. She wanted
+to be posted in ancient literature and ceramics. She had studied ceramics
+some already, and had got a good deal of information. She had found that
+in case of whooping cough, goose oil rubbed on the throat and lungs was
+just as good as it was in case of croup, and she felt that with a good
+teacher any lady would learn much that would be of incalculable value,
+and she, for one, was going for the whole hog or none.
+
+The Boston lady saved herself from fainting by fanning herself
+vigorously, and was about to show the two ladies that they had a wrong
+idea of æsthetics, when a lady from the West Side, who had just been
+married, got up and said she felt that we were all too ignorant of
+æsthetics, and they should take every opportunity to become better
+informed. She said when she first went to keeping house she couldn't
+tell baking powder that had alum in it from the pure article, and she
+had nearly ruined her husband's stomach before she learned anything.
+And speaking of bric-a-brac, she felt that every lady should learn to
+economize, by occasionally serving a picked up dinner, of bric-a-brac
+that would otherwise be wasted.
+
+The Boston lady found she could not speak understandingly, so she
+left-her chair and went around to the different groups of ladies, who
+were talking earnestly, to get them interested. The first group of four
+that she broke in on were talking of the best way to renovate seal-skin
+cloaks that had been moth eaten. One lady said that she had tried all
+the æsthetic insect powder that was advertised in the papers, and the
+moths would fairly get fat on it, and beg for more; but last spring she
+found out that moths were afraid of whisky.
+
+Her husband worked in a wholesale whisky store, and his garments became
+saturated with the perfume, and you couldn't hire a moth to go near him.
+So she got an empty whisky barrel and put in all her furs, and the moths
+never touched a thing. But she said the moths had a high old time all
+summer. They would get together in squads and go to the barrel and smell
+at the bung-hole, and lock arms and sashay around the room, staggering
+just as though there was an election, and about eleven o'clock they
+would walk up to a red spot in the carpet and take a lunch, just like
+men going to a saloon.
+
+She said there was one drawback to the whisky barrel, as it gave her
+away when she first went out in company after taking her clothes out of
+the barrel. She wore her seal-skin cloak to the Good Templars' Lodge,
+the first night after taking it out, and they were going to turn her out
+of the Lodge on the ground that she had violated her obligation.
+
+“You may talk about your Scandinavian literature,” said she, turning
+to the Boston lady, “but when it comes to keeping moths out of furs, an
+empty whisky barrel knocks the everlasting socks off of anything I ever
+tried.”
+
+The Boston lady put on her æsthetic hat, and was about to take her
+leave, satisfied that she had struck the wrong crowd, when a sweet
+little woman, with pouting lips, called her aside. The Boston lady
+thought she had found at last one congenial soul, and she said:
+
+“What is it, my dear?”
+
+The little lady hesitated a moment, and with a tear in her eye she
+asked:
+
+“Madam, can you tell me what is good for worms? Fido has acted for a
+week as though he was ill, and----”
+
+That settled it. The Boston lady went away, and has never been heard of
+since.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+“A young fellow and his girl went out sleighing yesterday, and the
+lad returned with a frozen ear. There is nothing very startling in the
+simple fact of a frozen ear, but the idea is that it was the ear next to
+the girl that he was foolish enough to let freeze.”
+
+A girl that will go out sleigh-riding with a young man and allow his
+ears to freeze, is no gentleman (“lady”??), and ought to be arrested.
+Why, here in Milwaukee, on the coldest days, we have seen a young man
+out riding with a girl, and his ears were so hot they would fairly
+“sis,” and there was not a man driving on the avenue but would have
+changed places with the young man, and allowed his ears to cool. Girls
+cannot sit too close during this weather. The climate is rigorous.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+Geo. W. Peck, of the _Sun_, recently delivered an address before the
+Wisconsin State Dairyman's Association. The following is an extract from
+the document:
+
+_Fellow creamationists_: In calling upon me, on this occasion,
+to enlighten you upon a subject that is dear to the hearts of all
+Americans, you have got the right man in the right place. It makes me
+proud to come to my old home and unfold truths that have been folded
+since I can remember. It may be said by scoffers, and it has been said
+to-day, in my presence, that I didn't know enough to even milk a cow. I
+deny the allegation; show me the allegator. If any gentleman present has
+got a cow here with him, and I can borrow a clothes-wringer, I will show
+you whether I can milk a cow or not. Or, if there is a cheese mine here
+handy, I will demonstrate that I can--_runnet_.
+
+The manufacture of cheese and butter has been among the earliest
+industries. Away back in the history of the world, we find Adam and Eve
+conveying their milk from the garden of Eden, in a one-horse wagon to
+the cool spring cheese factory, to be weighed in the balance. Whatever
+may be said of Adam and Eve to their discredit in the marketing of the
+products of their orchard, it has never been charged that they stopped
+at the pump and put water in their milk cans. Doubtless you all remember
+how Cain killed his brother Abel because Abel would not let him do the
+churning. We can picture Cain and Abel driving mooly cows up to the
+house from the pasture in the southeast corner of the garden, and Adam
+standing at the bars with a tin pail and a three-legged stool, smoking
+a meerschaum pipe and singing “Hold the fort for I am coming through
+the rye,” while Eve sat on the verandah altering over her last year's
+polonaise, and winking at the devil who stood behind the milk house
+singing, “I want to be an angel.” After he got through milking he came
+up and saw Eve blushing, and he said, “Madame, cheese it,” and she chose
+it.
+
+But to come down to the present day, we find that cheese has become one
+of the most important branches of manufacture. It is next in importance
+to the silver interest. And, fellow cheese mongers, you are doing
+yourselves great injustice that you do not petition congress to pass a
+bill to remonetize cheese. There is more cheese raised in this country
+than there is silver, and it is more valuable. Suppose you had not
+eaten a mouthful in thirty days, and you should have placed on the table
+before you ten dollars stamped out of silver bullion on one plate and
+nine dollars stamped out of cheese bullion on another plate. Which would
+you take first? Though the face value of the nine cheese dollars would
+be ten per cent, below the face value of ten silver dollars, you would
+take the cheese. You could use it to better advantage in your business.
+Hence I say cheese is more valuable than silver, and it should be made
+legal tender for all debts, public and private, except pew rent. I may
+be in advance of other eminent financiers, who have studied the currency
+question, but I want to see the time come, and I trust the day is not
+far distant, when 412 1/2 grains of cheese will be equal to a dollar in
+codfish, and when the merry jingle of slices of cheese shall be heard in
+every pocket.
+
+Then every cheese factory can make its own coin, money will be plenty,
+everybody will be happy, and there never will be any more war. It may
+be asked how this currency can be redeemed? I would have an
+incontrovertible bond, made of Limburger cheese, which is stronger and
+more durable. When this is done you can tell the rich from the poor man
+by the smell of his money. Now-a-days many of us do not even get a smell
+of money, but in the good days which are coming the gentle zephyr will
+waft to us the able-bodied Limburger, and we shall know that money is
+plenty.
+
+The manufacture of cheese is a business that a poor man can engage in as
+well as a rich man. I say it, without fear of successful contradiction,
+and say it boldly, that a poor man with, say 200 cows, if he thoroughly
+understands his business, can market more cheese than a rich man who
+owns 300 oxen. This is susceptible of demonstration. If my boy showed
+a desire to become a statesman, I would say to him, “Young man, get
+married, buy a mooley cow, go to Sheboygan county, and start a cheese
+factory.”
+
+Speaking of cows, did it ever occur to you, gentlemen, what a saving
+it would be to you if you should adopt mooley cows instead of horned
+cattle? It takes at least three tons of hay and a large quantity of
+ground feed annually to keep a pair of horns fat, and what earthly use
+are they? Statistics show that there are annually killed 45,000 grangers
+by cattle with horns. You pass laws to muzzle dogs, because one in ten
+thousand goes mad, and yet more people are killed by cattle horns than
+by dogs. What the country needs is more mooley cows.
+
+Now that I am on the subject, it may be asked what is the best paying
+breed for the dairy. My opinion is divided between the south down and
+the cochin china. Some like one the best and some the other, but as for
+me, give me liberty or give me death.
+
+There are many reforms that should be inaugurated in the manufacture
+of cheese. Why should cheese be made round? I am inclined to the belief
+that the making of cheese round is a superstition. Who had not rather
+buy a good square piece of cheese, than a wedge-shape chunk, all rind
+at one end, and as thin as a Congressman's excuse for voting back pay
+at the other? Make your cheese square and the consumer will rise up and
+call you another.
+
+Another reform that might be inaugurated would be to veneer the cheese
+with building paper or clapboards, instead of the time-honored piece of
+towel. I never saw cheese cut that I didn't think that the cloth around
+it had seen service as a bandage on some other patient. But I may have
+been wrong. Another thing that does not seem to be right, is to see so
+many holes in cheese. It seems to me that solid cheese, one made by
+one of the old masters, with no holes in it--I do not accuse you of
+cheating, but don't you feel a little ashamed when you see a cheese cut,
+and the holes are the biggest part of it? The little cells may be handy
+for the skipper, but the consumer feels the fraud in his innermost soul.
+
+Among the improvements made in the manufacture of cheese I must not
+forget that of late years the cheese does not resemble the grindstone
+as much as it did years ago. The time has been when, if the farmer could
+not find his grindstone, all he had to do was to mortise a hole in
+the middle of a cheese, and turn it and grind his scythe. Before the
+invention of nitro-glycerine, it was a good day's work to hew off cheese
+enough for a meal. Time has worked wonders in cheese.
+
+
+
+
+COLORED CONCERT TROUPES.
+
+Sometimes it seems as though the colored people ought to have a guardian
+appointed over them. Now, you take a colored concert troupe, and though
+they may have splendid voices, they do not know enough to take advantage
+of their opportunities. People go to hear them because they are colored
+people, and they want to hear old-fashioned negro melodies, and yet
+these mokes will tackle Italian opera and high toned music that they
+don't know how to sing.
+
+They will sing these fancy operas, and people will not pay any
+attention. Along toward the end of the programme they will sing some old
+nigger song, and the house fairly goes wild and calls them out half a
+dozen times. And yet they do not know enough to make up a programme of
+such music as they can sing, and such as the audience want.
+
+They get too big, these colored people do, and can't strike their level.
+People who have heard Kellogg, and Marie Roze, and Gerster, are sick
+when a black cat with a long red dress comes out and murders the same
+pieces the prima donnas have sung. We have seen a colored girl attempt a
+selection from some organ-grinder opera, and she would howl and screech,
+and catch her breath and come again, and wheel and fire vocal shrapnel,
+limber up her battery and take a new position, and unlimber and send
+volleys of soprano grape and cannister into the audience, and then she
+would catch on to the highest note she could reach and hang to it like
+a dog to a root, till you would think they would have to throw a pail
+of water on her to make her let go, and all the time she would be biting
+and shaking like a terrier with a rat, and finally give one kick at last
+at her red trail with her hind foot, and back off the stage looking as
+though she would have to be carried on a dustpan, and the people in the
+audience would look at each other in pity and never give her a cheer,
+when, if she had come out and patted her leg, and put one hand up to
+her ear, and sung, “Ise a Gwine to See Massa Jesus Early in de Mornin',”
+ they would have split the air wide open with cheers, and called her out
+five times.
+
+The fact is, they haven't got sense.
+
+There was a hungry-looking, round-shouldered, sick-looking colored man
+in that same party, that was on the programme for a violin solo. When
+he came out the people looked at each other, as much as to say, “Now we
+will have some fun.” The moke struck an attitude as near Ole Bull as he
+could with his number eleven feet and his hollow chest, and played
+some diabolical selection from a foreign cat opera that would have been
+splendid if Wilhelmjor Ole Bull had played it, but the colored brother
+couldn't get within a mile of the tune. He rasped his old violin for
+twenty minutes and tried to look grand, and closed his eyes and seemed
+to soar away to heaven,--and the audience wished to heaven he had,--and
+when he became exhausted and squeezed the last note oat, and the
+audience saw that he was in a profuse perspiration, they let him go and
+did not call him back. If he had come out and sat on the back of a chair
+and sawed off “The Devil's Dream,” or “The Arkansaw Traveler,” that
+crowd would have cheered him till he thought he was a bigger man than
+Grant.
+
+But he didn't have any sense. If some one will send a marked copy of
+this paper to some of these colored concert troupes, and they will take
+the hint, and sing nigger songs, they will make a heap of money, where
+now they have to live on a free lunch route.
+
+
+
+
+COULDN'T GET AWAY FROM HIM.
+
+A good many may have wondered why we so suddenly quit speeding our horse
+on the avenue. For two or three days we couldn't go down the avenue
+enough, and there is no person but will admit that our old pile driver
+trotted real spry. We did not get the idea that he was the fastest
+horse that ever was, but he seemed real soon. It takes a good deal of
+executive ability for a man who has a third-class horse to keep from
+going down the road with horses that are too fast. One must be a good
+judge, and when he finds a horse that he can beat, stick to him.
+
+We got the thing down pretty fine, but one day a man drove along beside
+us, going up, who seemed bound to get into conversation. He was a
+red-faced man, with these side-bar whiskers, evidently a German. He was
+driving a sorrel horse to a long sled, with a box on behind the seat,
+a sort of delivery sleigh. He had a barrel in the sleigh, filled with
+intestines from a slaughter house, two baskets full of the same freight,
+a cow's head, and two sheep heads. He was evidently owner of a sausage
+factory somewhere, and as he kept along beside us his company was
+somewhat annoying. Not that we were proud, but we feared the people on
+the avenue would think we were a silent partner in a sausage factory,
+and that we were talking business.
+
+The man was real entertaining in his conversation, but the load he
+had was not congenial, and we were glad when the foot of the hill was
+reached, so we could turn around and go down, and get away from him. We
+turned and spit on our hands, and begun to pull up on the old horse,
+and he began to get his legs untangled and to go. We forgot about the
+sausage butcher, as we went down, the fresh air making every nerve get
+up and git.
+
+Suddenly the nose of a sorrel horse began to work up by where we sat,
+and we looked around, and may we never live to make a million dollars if
+it wasn't the red-faced sausage man, intestines, cow's head, basket and
+all, and his old horse was coming for all that was out. We blush for our
+sex. It would look nice to get in the papers that we had been racing our
+blue-blooded thoroughbred against a sausage butcher, wouldn't it? Our
+plan was formed in an instant. Great generals form plans suddenly, and
+we took out the whip and touched our horse on a raw spot, intending to
+go right away from the fertilizer.
+
+The horse seemed to smell the load behind him, and to have his pride
+touched, for he snorted and let out another link. We don't know as
+anyone would believe it, but the faster our beautiful and costly steed
+went, the faster that homely and cheap butcher horse climbed. People by
+the hundreds all along the line were watching the race. The baskets
+of sausage covets were slewing around from one side of his sled to the
+other, and we expected every moment one of them would flop over into our
+cutter.
+
+Matters were becoming desperate, and we gave the horse one more cut and
+went the last block at a fearful rate, but the butcher was right beside
+us, so one mosquito bar would have covered us, and we came out neck and
+neck, the Dutchman a little ahead because his horse was unchecked, and
+the crowd yelled for the butcher. We turned to go up, when the butcher
+came up alongside just as a carriage of beautiful ladies were passing,
+and as they turned up their noses at his load, he said:
+
+“Dot vas a nice race, ain't it, Mister Beck?”
+
+We could have killed him in cold blood. Not that we dislike to be
+beaten. We have always been beaten. It isn't that. But we don't want
+to trot horses with no delivery wagon. We are not calculated for
+associating, in the horse arena, with a load of slaughter house refuse.
+It is asking too much. We are willing to race with Deacon Van Schaick,
+or brother Antisdel, or Elder Hyde, or Elder Gordon, or any of those
+truly good men in whom there is no guile, and in whose cutters there is
+no foreign matter, but as long as reason maintains her throne we shall
+never go upon the track again with a butcher.
+
+There should be a law passed making it a penal offence for a person with
+a delivery wagon to tackle onto a man who drives a thoroughbred. It is
+wrong, and will lead to trouble. We have not given up racing entirely,
+but hereafter we shall look the avenue over very close for butchers
+before we let out our four legged telescope. A butcher is just as good
+as anybody, understand us, but they must keep their distance. We
+don't want to look into, the hind end of no cutter that is filled with
+slaughter house ornaments, and we won't. It is not pride of birth, or
+anything of that kind, but such people ought to drive on Wells street,
+or have slower horses.
+
+
+
+
+DOGS AND HUMAN BEINGS.
+
+Lorillard, the New York tobacco man, had a poodle dog stolen, and has
+offered a reward of five hundred dollars for the arrest of the thief,
+and he informs a reporter that he will spend $10,000, if necessary, for
+the capture and conviction of the thief. [Applause.]
+
+The applause marked in there will be from human skye terriers, who have
+forgotten that only a few weeks ago several hundred girls, who had
+been working in Lorillard's factory, went on a strike because, as they
+allege, they were treated like dogs. We doubt if they were treated as
+well as this poodle was treated. We doubt, in case one of these poor,
+virtuous girls was kidnapped, if the great Lorillard would have offered
+as big a reward for the conviction of the human thief, as he has for the
+conviction of the person who has eloped with his poodle.
+
+We hope that the aristocracy of this country will never get to valuing
+a dog higher than it does a human being. When it gets so that a rich
+person would not permit a poodle to do the work in a tobacco factory
+that a poor girl does to support a sick mother, hell had better be
+opened for summer boarders. When girls work ten hours a day stripping
+nasty tobacco, and find at the end of the week that the fines for
+speaking are larger than the wages, and the fines go for the conviction
+of thieves who steal the girls' master's dog, no one need come around
+here lecturing at a dollar a head and telling us there is no hell.
+
+When a poor girl, who has gone creeping to her work at daylight, looks
+out of the window at noon to see her master's carriage go by, in which
+there is a five hundred dollar dog with a hundred dollar blanket on, and
+a collar set with diamonds, lolling on satin cushions, and the girl is
+fined ten cents for looking out of the window, you don't want to fool
+away any time trying to get us to go to a heaven where such heartless
+employers are expected.
+
+It is seldom the _Sun_ gets on its ear, but it can say with great
+fervency, “Damn a man that will work poor girls like slaves, and
+pay them next to nothing, and spend ten thousand dollars to catch a
+dog-thief!” If these sentiments are sinful, and for expressing them we
+are a candidate for fire and brimstone, it is all right, and the devil
+can stoke up and make up our bunk when he hears that we are on the
+through train.
+
+It seems now--though we may change our mind the first day at the
+fire--as though we had rather be in hades with a hundred million people
+who have always done the square thing, than to be in any heaven that
+will pass a man in who has starved the poor and paid ten thousand
+dollars to catch a dog-thief. We could have a confounded sight better
+time, even if we had our ulster all burned off. It would be worth the
+price of admission to stand with our back to the fire, and as we began
+to smell woolen burning near the pistol pocket, to make up faces at the
+ten-thousand-dollar-dog millionaires that were putting on style at the
+other place.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+Andrews' _Bazar_ says: “Gathered waists are very much worn.”
+
+If the men would gather the waists carefully and not squeeze so like
+blazes, they would not be worn so much. Some men go to work gathering
+a waist just as they would go to work washing sheep, or raking and
+binding. They ought to gather as though it was eggs done up in a
+funnel-shaped brown paper at a grocery.
+
+The Black River Falls Independent says: “If you have any old pants to
+give to the poor, take or send them to the Ladies' Relief Society.”
+
+Well, we have got plenty of them; but, bless you, we doubt if any member
+of the Ladies' Relief Society could wear them. They don't hook up.
+
+
+
+
+ARTHUR WILL KEEP A COW.
+
+It is announced by telegraph from Washington that Gen. Arthur will
+keep a cow at the White House during his term, to furnish milk for the
+family, rather than be obliged to depend upon a milk man who is in the
+habit of selling a mixed drink, though the customers, prefer to take
+it-straight. There is nothing that will do more to convince people of
+the true simplicity of a President than for him to keep a cow. No man
+who habitually associates with a cow, and stirs up a bran mash, and
+watches her plow her nose down to the bottom in search of a potato
+paring, can be wholly bad. If the President selects a good, honest
+cow we have no fears that he will be a tyrant in his administration of
+affairs. A man is very apt to absorb many of the characteristics and
+traits of the cow that he milks. If she is a good natured, honest,
+law abiding cow, that “hoists” at the word of command, stands firm
+and immovable while being milked, and “gives down” freely, so that the
+fingers are not cramped, and she does not switch her tail in the face of
+the milker, the man will be a good natured, generous, honest man, but
+if the cow is one of those communists, and has to be tied to the manger,
+and you have to hold one leg to keep her from kicking over the pail,
+and she tries to run a horn into you, and keeps stepping around, and
+her tail knocks your hat off and gets in your eyes, and your nerves are
+unstrung for fear she is thinking of some deviltry to play on you, the
+man whose duty it is to draw the milk from her udder will become harsh,
+suspicious, cruel, tricky, and mean; and he will grind the face of the
+poor.
+
+The country will hope that Mr. Arthur, in selecting a cow, will use more
+judgment than in selecting a cabinet, and will bring his great mind to
+bear on the subject as though he appreciated the situation. We trust
+he will not buy a cow of a democrat. There may be good cows owned by
+democrats, but they are not for sale, and a democrat would sell him a
+kicking cow that was farrow, just to injure his administration. Let him
+go to some friend in his own party, some man who is interested in the
+success of his administration, and state his case, and if possible get a
+cow on trial.
+
+This policy is wise from the fact that he could thus see if the cow was
+going to hold out as a good milker. Some cows give a good mess of milk
+when they first go to a new place, but in a week they let down and the
+first thing you know they dry up entirely. Mr. Arthur wants to look out
+for this. The country is full of bold, bad men, who would palm off a
+kicking cow, or one that was not a stayer, onto their best friends.
+
+Another thing, we would advise Mr. Arthur not to use a milking stool
+with one leg, but to get one with three legs. It is undignified in any
+man to stretch out on a barn floor, with a one-legged milk stool kicking
+him in the pistol pocket, a pail of milk distributing itself over his
+person, and a frightened cow backed up in a stall threatening to hook
+his daylights out, and it would be more undignified in a President of
+the United States. Get a three-legged stool, by all means, or use an
+empty soap box to sit on.
+
+If all this unsolicited but well meant advice is taken, the country will
+be in no danger from Arthur's decision to keep a cow, and we shall hope
+to see him on some fine morning next summer, as the sun is tinging the
+eastern horizon with its ray as he slaps her on the rump with a piece of
+barrel stave, or we will accept an invitation to visit his barn and show
+him how to mix a bran mash that will wake to ecstacy the aforesaid cow,
+and cause her milk to flow like back pay from the treasury.
+
+When it comes to cows we deserve a cabinet position.
+
+
+
+
+SHALL THERE BE HUGGING IN THE PARKS?
+
+The law-abiding people of this community were startled on Tuesday,
+and the greatest indignation prevailed at an editorial article in the
+_Sentinel_ denouncing the practice of hugging in the public parks. The
+article went on to show that the placing of seats in the parks leads
+to hugging, and the editor denounced hugging in the most insane manner
+possible.
+
+The _Sun_ does not desire to enter politics, but when a great
+constitutional question like this comes up, it will be found on the side
+of the weak against the strong.
+
+The _Sentinel_ advises the removal of the seats from the park because
+hugging is done on them. Great heavens! has it come to this? Are the
+dearest rights of the American citizen to be abridged in this summary
+manner? Let us call the attention of that powerful paper to a clause in
+the Declaration of Independence, which asserts that “all men are created
+free and equal, endowed with certain inalienable rights, among which are
+life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” When the framers of that
+great Declaration of Independence were at work on that clause, they must
+have had in view the pastime of hugging in the parks.
+
+Hugging is certainly a “pursuit of happiness.” People do not hug for
+wages--that is, except on the stage. Nobody is obliged to hug. It is a
+sort of spontaneous combustion, as it were, of the feelings, and has to
+have proper conditions of the atmosphere to make it a success. Parties
+who object to hugging are old, usually, and have been satiated, and are
+like a lemon that has done duty in circus lemonade. If they had a job of
+hugging, they would want to hire a man to do it for them.
+
+A man who objects to a little natural, soul-inspiring hugging on a back
+seat in a park, of an evening, with a fountain throwing water all over
+little cast-iron cupids, has probably got a soul, but he hasn't got it
+with him. To the student of nature there is no sight more beautiful than
+to see a flock of young people take seats in the park, after the sun has
+gone to bed in the west, and the moon has pulled a fleecy cloud over her
+face for a veil, so as not to disturb the worshippers.
+
+A couple, one a male and the other a female, will sit far apart on the
+cast-iron seat for a moment, when the young lady will try to fix her
+cloak over her shoulders, and she can't fix it, and then the young man
+will help her, and when he has got it fixed he will go off and leave one
+arm around the small of her back. He will miss his arm, and wonder where
+he left it, and go back after it, and in the dark he will feel around
+with the other hand to find the hand he left, and suddenly the two hands
+will meet; they will express astonishment, and clasp each other, and be
+so glad that they will begin to squeeze, and the chances are that they
+will cut the girl in two, but they never do. Under such circumstances, a
+girl can exist on less atmosphere than she can when doing a washing.
+
+There is just about so much hugging that has to be done, and the
+_Sentinel_ should remember that very many people have not facilities at
+their homes for such soul-stirring work, and they are obliged to flee
+to the parks, or to the woods, where the beneficent city government has
+provided all of the modern improvements.
+
+Hugging is as necessary to the youth of the land as medicine to the
+sick, and instead of old persons, whose days of kittenhood are over,
+throwing cold water upon the science of hugging, they should encourage
+it by all legitimate means.
+
+When, in strolling through the parks, you run on to a case of sporadic
+hugging, instead of making a noise on the gravel walk, to cause the
+huggists to stop it, you should trace your steps noiselessly, get behind
+a tree, and see how long they can stand it without dying. Instead of
+removing the cast-iron seats from the parks, we should be in favor of
+furnishing reserved seats for old people, so they can sit and watch the
+hugging.
+
+It doesn't do any hurt to hug.
+
+People think it is unhealthy, but nobody was ever known to catch cold
+while hugging. It is claimed by some that young people who stay out
+nights and hug, are not good for anything the next day. There is
+something to this, but if they didn't get any hugging they wouldn't be
+worth a cent any time. They would be all the time looking for it.
+
+No, good Mr. _Sentinel_, on behalf of fifty thousand young people who
+have no organ to make known their wants, we ask you to stay your hand,
+and do not cause the seats to be removed from the parks. Remember how
+many there are who have yet to learn the noble art of hugging, and give
+them a chance.
+
+
+
+
+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 the 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.
+
+
+
+
+CANNIBALS AND CORK LEGS.
+
+Great results are expected from an experiment recently tried by the
+American Missionary Society. Last fall they sent as missionary to the
+cannibal Islands a brother who had lost both arms and both legs in a
+railroad accident. He was provided with cork limbs, and his voice being,
+in good condition it was believed he could get in his work with the
+heathen as well as though he was a whole man. The idea was to allow the
+cannibals to kill him and eat him, believing that the heathen would see
+the error of their ways and swear off on human flesh.
+
+A report has been received which is very encouraging. It seems that the
+cannibals killed the good missionary, and cut off his arms and legs for
+a sort of stew, or “boyaw,” thus falling directly into the trap set for
+them by the missionary society. The missionary stationed at the next
+town, who furnishes the society with the data, says it was the most
+laughable thing he ever witnessed, to see the heathen chew on those
+cork limbs. They boiled them all day and night, keeping up a sort of a
+go-as-you-please walk around, or fresh meat dance, and giving a sacred
+concert about like our national “Whoop it up, Liza Jane,” and when they
+stuck a fork into the boiling limbs, and found that the “meat” seemed
+water soaked, they set the table and sounded the loud timbrel for
+breakfast.
+
+The surviving missionary says he shall never forget the look of pain on
+the face of a buck cannibal as he bit into the elbow joint of the late
+lamented and struck a brass hinge. He picked it out as an American would
+pick a buckshot out of a piece of venison, and laid it beside his plate
+in an abstracted manner, and began to chew on the cork elbow. Any person
+who has ever tried to draw a cork out of a beer bottle with his teeth
+can realize the feelings of these cannibals as they tried to draw
+sustenance from the remains of the cork man. They were saddened, and it
+is safe to say they are incensed against the missionary society.
+
+Whether they will conclude that all Americans have become tough, and
+quit trying to masticate them, is not known, though that is the object
+sought to be attained by the society. One of the cannibals said he
+knew, when those legs and arms would not stay under water when they were
+boiling, and had to be loaded down with stones, that the meat wasn't
+right, but his wife told him “some pork _would_ bile so.”
+
+The experiment is worth following up, and we suppose hereafter there
+will be a great demand for men with cork arms and legs to be sent as
+missionaries. After a few such experiences the cannibals may see the
+error of their ways and become Christians, and eat dog sausage and
+Limberg cheese.
+
+
+
+
+THE MINISTERIAL PUGILISTS.
+
+Those who read the account of the trial of Rev. Carhart, at Oshkosh,
+are about as sick of true goodness as men can be. They open the
+ecclesiastical court by singing “A charge to keep I have,” and then
+Brother Haddock, after a prayer has been delivered, does not keep his
+charges, but fires them at the presiding elder. Good old tunes are sung
+previous to calling witnesses to testify to alleged three carde monte
+acts of a disciple of Christ. Sanctimonious looking men pray for divine
+guidance, and then try to prove that a dear brother has bilked another
+dear brother out of several hundred dollars on Texas lands, and that he
+tried to trade a wagon at double what it is worth to settle the matter.
+
+They sing, “Take me just as I am,” and then try to prove that the one
+who made charges against the other is not altogether holy, because he is
+alleged to have confessed to passing the night in a room with a female
+church member, in silent devotion, when he swears it is a lie,--that he
+only laid on a lounge.
+
+Prominent Methodists collect at the bull-fight in Oshkosh, take sides
+with one or the other, and lay their bottom prayer that their champion
+will come out on top, with not a stripe polluted nor a star erased:
+
+One side sings, “Jesus caught me when a stranger,” and the other side
+smiles and winks and whispers that they are glad he was caught.
+
+They sing, “Rock of ages, cleft for me,” and proceed to cleave the rock
+of each other's character. They cast one eye heavenward in prayer, while
+with the other they watch the other side to see that they don't steal
+the testimony.
+
+Some one starts “Little drops of water,” and big drops of perspiration
+appear on truly good foreheads for fear proof will be adduced to show
+that money has been obtained under false pretenses.
+
+And this goes by the name of religion!
+
+There should be honor among ministers. Both of the principals in
+this suit should be bounced. If the charges are true, Carhart should
+emigrate. If they are not true, Haddock should emigrate.
+
+
+
+
+MUSIC ON THE WATERS.
+
+Our readers have no doubt noticed in the papers that the Goodrich
+Transportation Company had secured a band from Waupun to make music on
+the boats of that line between Milwaukee and Chicago this summer. Well,
+there is trouble going on in consequence. Mr. Hurson, of the Goodrich
+line, entrusted the organization of the band to Mr. Nick Jarvis, of
+Waupun, a gentleman whose reputation as a scientific pounder of the
+bass drum has received encomiums from the crowned heads of Oshkosh and
+Hazen's cheese factory.
+
+Having such confidence in Mr. Jarvis, Mr. Hurson gave him a roving
+commission, with authority to secure the best talent in the known world.
+He organized the band, and then it occurred to Mr. Jarvis that the
+musicians had always been accustomed to playing on land, and they
+might be sick on the water, so he took measures to accustom them to a
+sea-faring life before leaving Waupun. He got them to practicing in
+a building, and hired some boys to throw water up on the side of the
+house, to see if they would be seasick. The band fellows would have
+stood the sea first-rate, only the villains who had been hired to throw
+the water used a lot of dirty stuff they found back of a hotel, which
+smelled powerful.
+
+A number of the band members felt the swash of the waves against the
+bulwarks of the house, and smelled what they supposed to be salt sea
+air, and they leaned out of the windows and wanted to throw up their
+situations, but a German in the party had a lemon and some cheese, which
+was given around to taste and smell, and they came out of it all right.
+
+Mr. Jarvis' next idea, to accustom the prairie sailors to the vasty
+deep, was to take them out on the mill pond at Waupun in a skiff. They
+got out in the middle of the pond, and were playing a selection from the
+opera of “Solid Muldoon,” when a boy who had slipped into the boat with
+a fish-pole, got a bite from a bull-head, which caused the vessel to
+roll, and the utmost confusion prevailed. Ordering the snare drum player
+to “cut away the main bob-stay, and belay the cornet,” Mr. Jarvis took
+the bass drum between his teeth and jumped overboard, followed by the
+band, and they waded ashore.
+
+On Monday last the band arrived in Milwaukee and reported on board the
+Goodrich steamer, in the river, ready for business. They were told to
+go as they pleased until evening, when they would be expected to play
+before the boat started, and also on the trip to Chicago. The men sat
+around on deck all the afternoon, and smelled of the river. It smelled
+different from any salt water they ever snuffed, and they wanted to go
+home.
+
+At seven o'clock the band played a few tunes as the boat lay in the
+river, and finally she let go her ropes and steamed down toward the
+lake, the band whooping it up to the “Blue Danube.” As the boat struck
+blue water, and her bow raised out about sixteen feet and began to
+jump, the cornet player stopped to pour water out of his horn, and lean
+against a post. He was as pale as death, and the tuba player stopped to
+see what ailed the cornet player, and to lean over the railing to see
+a man down stairs. The baritone had eaten something that did not agree
+with him, and he stopped playing and laid down in a life boat, the alto
+became cold around the extremities and quit playing and went to the
+smoke stack to warm himself, the b-flat began to perspire and quit
+playing and fanned himself with the cymbals, and all of the horn blowers
+were e-flat and b-flat on the deck in less than two minutes.
+
+The captain noticed that there was some discrepancy in the music and
+came on deck to see about it. Wading through the brass horns he came up
+to where the band had been, and found Nick Jarvis beating blazes out of
+the bass drum and Harve Hill carving the Blue Danube out of the snare
+drum, and that was all the music there was. The captain asked Jarvis
+what kind of a riot that was, and he told him it was the best they could
+do under the circumstances.
+
+Restoratives were applied to the members, and they braced up enough to
+start in on “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep,” but they couldn't play
+it through, owing to dyspepsia. The captain got them into the cabin to
+play for the young folks to dance, but the only thing they could play
+without getting sick was “Home Again, from a Foreign Shore,” and the
+bass drum had to do it all. The horn blowers were out looking at the
+starlight, leaning over the railing, as the stars were reflected in the
+water.
+
+At Racine it took some time to load, owing to rough water, and in the
+midst of it all a pale man, with a snare drum on his arm, rolled up
+against the captain. It was Harve Hill. He held his hand over his mouth
+and in a voice choked with emotion and fried potatoes he said:
+
+“Captain, I am a poor man, but if you will land this boat and save me, I
+will give you nine dollars.”
+
+The captain decided to dispense with the music the rest of the night,
+and let the band get on its sea legs.
+
+At Chicago, the next morning, Jarvis, who had got a little sick, too,
+tried to induce the captain to allow the band to walk back to Milwaukee
+on the shore, beside the boat. He said they could play any tune that
+ever was played, on land, and the passengers could hear it just as well,
+if the boat kept alongside of the band. The captain wouldn't let them
+off, and they have been kept on the boat all the week, so that now they
+are old sailors, and can play all right. But it was pretty tough the
+first night. Waupun is organizing a reception for the band when it comes
+home.
+
+
+
+
+WOMAN-DOZING A DEMOCRAT.
+
+A fearful tale comes to us from Columbus. A party of prominent citizens
+of that place took a trip to the Dells of Wisconsin one day last week.
+It was composed of ladies and gentlemen of both political parties,
+and it was hoped that nothing would occur to mar the pleasure of the
+excursion.
+
+When the party visited the Dells, Mr. Chapin, a lawyer of Democratic
+proclivities, went out upon a rock overhanging a precipice, or words to
+that effect, and he became so absorbed in the beauty of the scene that
+he did not notice a Republican lady who left the throng and waltzed
+softly up behind him. She had blood in her eye and gum in her mouth, and
+she grasped the lawyer, who is a weak man, by the arms, and hissed in
+his ear:
+
+“Hurrah for Garfield, or I will plunge you headlong into the yawning
+gulf below!”
+
+It was a trying moment. Chapin rather enjoyed being held by a woman,
+but not in such a position that, if she let go her hold to spit on
+her hands, he would go a hundred feet down, and become as flat as the
+Greenback party, and have to be carried home in a basket.
+
+In a second he thought over all the sins of his past life, which was
+pretty quick work, as anybody will admit who knows the man. He thought
+of how he would be looked down upon by Gabe Bouck, and all the fellows,
+if it once got out that he had been frightened into going back on his
+party.
+
+He made up his mind that he would die before he would hurrah for
+Garfield, but when the merciless woman pushed him towards the edge of
+the rock, and said, “Last call! Yell, or down you go!” he opened his
+mouth and yelled so they heard it in Kilbourn City:
+
+“Hurrah for Garfield! Now lemme go!”
+
+Though endowed with more than ordinary eloquence, no remarks that he had
+ever made before brought the applause that this did. Everybody yelled,
+and the woman smiled as pleasantly as though she had not crushed the
+young life out of her victim, and left him a bleeding sacrifice on the
+altar of his country, but when she had realized what she had done her
+heart smote her, and she felt bad.
+
+Chapin will never be himself again. From that moment his proud spirit
+was broken, and all during the picnic he seemed to have lost his cud. He
+leaned listlessly against a tree, pale as death, and fanned himself
+with a skimmer. When the party had spread the lunch on the ground
+and gathered around, sitting on the ant-hills, he sat down with them
+mechanically, but his appetite was gone, and when that is gone there is
+not enough of him left for a quorum.
+
+Friends rallied around him, passed the pickles, and drove the antmires
+out of a sandwich, and handed it to him on a piece of shingle, but he
+either passed or turned it down. He said he couldn't take a trick. Later
+on, when the lemonade was brought on, the flies were skimmed off of some
+of it, and a little colored water was put in to make it look inviting,
+but his eyes were sot. He said they couldn't fool him. After what had
+occurred, he didn't feel as though any Democrat was safe. He expected to
+be poisoned on account of his politics, and all he asked was to live to
+get home.
+
+Nothing was left undone to rally him, and cause him to forget the
+fearful scene through which he had passed. Only once did he partially
+come to himself, and show an interest in worldly affairs, and that was
+when it was found that he had sat down on some raspberry jam with his
+white pants on. When told of it, he smiled a ghastly smile, and said
+they were all welcome to his share of the jam.
+
+They tried to interest him in conversation by drawing war maps with
+three-tined forks on the jam, but he never showed that he knew what
+they were about until Mr. Moak, of Watertown, took a brush, made of
+cauliflower preserved in mustard, and shaded the lines of the war map on
+Mr. Cha-pin's trousers, which Mr. Butterfield had drawn in the jam. Then
+his artistic eye took in the incongruity of the colors, and he gasped
+for breath, and said:
+
+“Moak, that is played out. People will notice it.”
+
+But he relapsed again into semi-unconsciousness, and never spoke again,
+not a great deal, till he got home.
+
+He has ordered that there be no more borrowing of sugar and drawings of
+tea back and forth between his house and that of the lady who broke his
+heart, and he has announced that he will go without saurkraut all winter
+rather than borrow a machine for cutting cabbage of a woman that would
+destroy the political prospects of a man who had never done a wrong in
+his life.
+
+He has written to the chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee
+to suspend judgment on his case, until he can explain how it happened
+that a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat hurrahed for Garfield.
+
+
+
+
+A LIVELY TRAIN LOAD.
+
+Last week a train load of insane persons were removed from the Oshkosh
+Asylum to the Madison Asylum. As the train was standing on the sidetrack
+at Watertown Junction it created considerable curiosity. People who have
+ever passed Watertown Junction have noticed the fine old gentleman who
+comes into the car with a large square basket, peddling popcorn. He is
+one of the most innocent and confiding men in the world. He is honest,
+and he believes that everybody else is honest.
+
+He came up to the depot with his basket, and seeing the train he asked
+Pierce, the landlord there, what train it was. Pierce, who is a most
+diabolical person, told the old gentleman that it was a load of members
+of the legislature and female lobbyists going to Madison. With that
+beautiful confidence which the pop corn man has in all persons, he
+believed the story, and went in the car to sell pop corn.
+
+Stopping at the first seat, where a middle-aged lady was sitting alone,
+the pop corn man passed out his basket and said, “fresh pop corn.” The
+lady took her foot down off the stove, looked at the man a moment with
+eyes glaring and wild, and said, “It is--no, it cannot be--and yet it
+_is_ me long lost Duke of Oshkosh,” and she grabbed the old man by the
+necktie with one hand and pulled him down into the seat, and began to
+mow away corn into her mouth. The pop corn man blushed, looked at the
+rest of the passengers to see if they were looking, and said, as he
+replaced the necktie knot from under his left ear and pushed his collar
+down, “Madame, you are mistaken. I have never been a duke in Oshkosh.
+I live here at the Junction.” The woman looked at him as though she
+doubted his statement, but let him go.
+
+He proceeded to the next seat, when a serious looking man rose up and
+bowed; the pop corn man also bowed and smiled as though he might have
+met him before. Taking a paper of pop corn and putting it in his coat
+tail pocket, the serious man said, “I was honestly elected President of
+the United States in 1876, but was counted out by the vilest conspiracy
+that ever was concocted on the earth, and I believe you are one of the
+conspirators,” and he spit on his hands and looked the pop corn man
+in the eye. The pop corn man said he never took any active part in
+politics, and had nothing to do with that Hayes business at all. Then
+the serious man sat down and began eating the pop corn, while two
+women on the other side of the car helped themselves to the corn in the
+basket.
+
+The pop corn man held out his hand for the money, when a man two seats
+back came forward and shook hands with him, saying: “They told me you
+would not come, but you have come, Daniel, and now we will fight it out.
+I will take this razor, and you can arm yourself at your leisure.” The
+man reached into an inside, pocket of his coat, evidently for a razor,
+when the pop corn man started for the door, his eyes sticking out two
+inches. Every person he passed took a paper of pop corn, one man grabbed
+his coat and tore one tail off, another took his basket away and as
+he rushed out on the platform the basket was thrown at his head, and a
+female voice said, “I will be ready when the carriage calls at 8.”
+
+As the old gentleman struck the platform and began to arrange his toilet
+he met Fitzgerald, the conductor, who asked him what was the matter.
+He said Pierce told him that crowd was going to the legislature, “but,”
+ says he, as he picked some pieces of paper collar out of the back of
+his neck, “if those people are not delegates to a democratic convention,
+then I have been peddling pop corn on this road ten years for nothing,
+and don't know my business.” Fitz told him they were patients going to
+the Insane Asylum.
+
+The old man thought it over a moment, and then he picked up a coupling
+pin and went looking for Pierce. He says he will kill him. Pierce has
+not been out of the house since. This Pierce is the same man that lent
+us a runaway horse once.
+
+
+
+
+HOW SHARPER THAN A HOUND'S TOOTH.
+
+Years ago we swore on a stack of red chips that we would never own
+another dog. Six promising pups that had been presented to us, blooded
+setters and pointers, had gone the way of all dog flesh, with the
+distemper and dog buttons, and by falling in the cistern, and we had
+been bereaved _via_ dog misfortunes as often as John R. Bennett, of
+Janesville, has been bereaved on the nomination for attorney general.
+We could not look a pup in the face but it would get sick, and so we
+concluded never again to own a dog.
+
+The vow has been religiously kept since. Men have promised us thousands
+of pups, but we have never taken them. One conductor has promised us at
+least seventy-five pups, but he has always failed to get us to take one.
+Dog lovers have set up nights to devise a way to induce us to accept
+a dog. We held out firmly until last week. One day we met Pierce, the
+Watertown Junction hotel man, and he told us he had a greyhound pup that
+was the finest bread dog--we think he said bread dog, though it might
+have been a sausage dog he said--anyway he told us it was blooded, and
+that when it grew up to be a man--that is, figuratively speaking--when
+it grew up to be a dog full size, it would be the handsomest canine in
+the Northwest.
+
+We kicked on it, entirely, at first, but when he told us hundreds of men
+who had seen the pup had offered him thousands of dollars for it, but
+that he had rather give it to a friend than sell it to a stranger; we
+weakened, and told him to send it in.
+
+Well--(excuse us while we go into a corner and mutter a silent
+remark)--it came in on the train Monday, and was taken to the barn. It
+is the confoundedest looking dog that a white man ever set eyes on. It
+is about the color of putty, and about seven feet long, though it is
+only six months old. The tail is longer than a whip lash, and when you
+speak sassy to that dog, the tail will begin to curl around under him,
+amongst his legs, double around over his neck and back over where the
+tail originally was hitched to the dog, and then there is tail enough
+left for four ordinary dogs.
+
+It is the longest tail we have ever seen in one number. If that tail
+was cut up into ordinary tails, such as common dogs wear, there would
+be enough for all the dogs in the Seventh ward, with enough left for a
+white wire clothes line. When he lays down his tail curls up like a coil
+of telephone wire, and if you take hold of it and wring you can hear the
+dog at the central office. If that dog is as long in proportion, when
+he gets his growth, and his tail grows as much as his body does, the dog
+will reach from here to the Soldier's home.
+
+His head is about as big as a graham gem, and runs down to a point not
+bigger than a cambric needle, while his ears are about as big as a thumb
+to a glove, and they hang down as though the dog didn't want to hear
+anything. How a head of that kind can contain brains enough to cause a
+dog to know enough to go in when it rains is a mystery. But he seems to
+be intelligent.
+
+If a man comes along on the sidewalk, the dog will follow him off,
+follow him until he meets another man, and then he follows _him_ till he
+meets another, and so on until he has followed the entire population. He
+is not an aristocratic dog, but will follow one person just as soon as
+another, and to see him going along the street, with his tail coiled up,
+apparently oblivious to every human sentiment, it is touching.
+
+His legs are about the size of pipe stems, and his feet are as big as a
+base ball base. He wanders around, following a boy, then a middle aged
+man, then a little girl, then an old man, and finally, about meal time,
+the last person he follows seems to go by the barn and the dog wanders
+in and looks for a buffalo robe or a harness tug to chew. It does not
+cost anything to keep him, as he has only eaten one trotting harness and
+one fox skin robe since Monday, though it may not be right to judge of
+his appetite, as he may be a little off his feed.
+
+Pierce said he would be a nice dog to run with a horse, or under a
+carriage. Why, bless you, he won't go within twenty feet of a horse, and
+a horse would run away to look at him; besides, he gets right under a
+carriage wheel, and when the wheel runs over him he complains, and sings
+Pinafore.
+
+What under the sun that dog is ever going to be good for is more than we
+know. He is too lean and bony for sausage. A piece of that dog as big as
+your finger in a sausage would ruin a butcher. It would be a dead give
+away. He looks as though he might point game, if the game was brought to
+his attention, but he would be just as liable to point a cow. He might
+do to stuff and place in a front yard to frighten burglars. If a burglar
+wouldn't be frightened at that dog nothing would scare him.
+
+Anyway, now we have got him, we will bring him up, though it seems as
+though he would resemble a truss bridge or a refrigerator car, as much
+as a dog, when he gets his growth. For fear he will follow off a wagon
+track we tie a knot in his tail. Parties who have never seen a very long
+dog can call at the barn about meal time and see him.
+
+
+
+
+A SEWING MACHINE GIVEN TO THE BOSS GIRL.
+
+In response to a request from W. T. Vankirk, George W. Peck presented
+the Rock County Agricultural Society with a sewing machine, to be given
+to the “boss combination girl” of Rock County. With the machine he
+sent the following letter, which explains his meaning of a “combination
+girl,” etc.:
+
+Milwaukee, June 7, 1881.
+
+W. T. Vankirk--Dear Sir: Your letter, in reference to my giving some
+kind of a premium to somebody, at your County Fair, is received, and I
+have been thinking it over. I have brought my massive intellect to bear
+upon the subject, with the following result:
+
+I ship you to-day, by express, a sewing machine, complete, with cover,
+drop leaf, hemmer, tucker, feller, drawers, and everything that a girl
+wants, except corsets and tall stockings. Now, I want you to give that
+to the best “combination girl” in Rock County, with the compliments of
+the _Sun_.
+
+What I mean by a “combination,” is one that in the opinion of
+your Committee has all the modern improvements, and a few of the
+old-fashioned faults, such as health, etc. She must be good-looking,
+that is, not too handsome, but just handsome enough. You don't want to
+give this machine to any female statue, or parlor ornament, who don't
+know how to play a tune on it, or who is as cold as a refrigerator car,
+and has no heart concealed about her person. Our girl, that is, our
+“Fair Girl,” that takes this machine, must be “the boss.” She must be
+jolly and good-natured, such a girl as would make the young man that
+married her think that Rock County was the next door to heaven, anyway.
+She must be so healthy that nature's roses will discount any preparation
+ever made by man, and so well-formed that nothing artificial is needed
+to--well, Van, you know what I mean.
+
+You want to pick out a thoroughbred, that is, all wool, a yard
+wide--that is, understand me, I don't want the girl to be a yard wide,
+but just right. Your Committee don't want to get “mashed” on some
+ethereal creature whose belt is not big enough for a dog collar. This
+premium girl wants to be able to do a day's work, if necessary, and one
+there is no danger of breaking in two if her intended should hug her.
+
+After your Committee have got their eyes on a few girls that they think
+will fill the bill, then they want to find out what kind of girls
+they are around their home. Find if they honor their fathers and their
+mothers, and are helpful, and care as much for the happiness of those
+around them as they do for their own. If you find one who is handsome as
+Venus--I don't know Venus, but I have heard that she takes the cake--I
+say, if you find one that is perfect in everything, but shirks her
+duties at home, and plays, “I Want to Be an Angel,” on the piano, while
+her mother is mending her stockings, or ironing her “picnic skirts,” then
+let her go ahead and be an angel as quick as she wants to, but don't
+give her the machine.. You catch the idea?
+
+Find a girl who has the elements of a noble woman; one whose heart is so
+large that she has to wear a little larger corset than some, but one who
+will make her home happy, and who is a friend to all; one who would
+walk further to do a good deed, and relieve suffering, than she would to
+patronize an ice cream saloon; one who would keep her mouth shut a month
+before she would say an unkind word, or cause a pang to another. Let
+your Committee settle on such a girl, and she is as welcome to that
+machine as possible.
+
+Now, Van, you ought to have a Committee appointed at once, and no one
+should know who the Committee is. They should keep their eyes out from
+now till the time of the Fair, and they should compare notes once in a
+while. You have got some splendid judges of girls there in Janesville,
+but you better appoint married men. They are usually more unbiased. They
+should not let any girl know that she is suspected of being the premium
+girl, until the judgment is rendered, so no one will be embarrassed by
+feeling that she is competing tor a prize.
+
+Now, Boss, I leave the constitution and the girls in your hands; and if
+this premium is the means of creating any additional interest in your
+Fair, and making people feel good natured and jolly, I shall be amply
+repaid.
+
+Your friend,
+
+Geo. W. Peck.
+
+
+
+
+DON'T APPRECIATE KINDNESS.
+
+One of the members of the Humane Society, who lives in an aristocratic
+ward, had been annoyed at hearing sounds from a stable near his
+residence, which indicated that a boy who had charge of a horse was
+in the habit of pounding the animal vigorously every morning, while
+cleaning off the dirt. It seemed to the humane man that the boy must use
+a barrel stave or fence board to curry off the horse, and the way the
+animal danced around the barn was terrible.
+
+It occurred every morning, and the humane man made up his mind that it
+was his duty to put a stop to it. He went to the barn one morning, just
+as the cotillion commenced. Looking through a knot hole he saw the horse
+tied so his head was away up to the top of the barn, so he could not use
+his teeth to defend himself. The boy stood with a curry comb in one hand
+and a piece of plank in the other, and he warmed the horse with both,
+and the animal kicked for all that was out.
+
+The humane man thought this was the worst case of cruelty to animals
+that ever was, and he rapped for admission. The boy, covered with
+perspiration, horse tail, stable refuse and indignation, opened the
+door, and the humane man proceeded to read him a lecture about cruelty
+to dumb animals, called him a fiend in human form, and told him that
+kindness was what was necessary, instead of a club.
+
+The boy couldn't get in a word edgeways for a while, but when the man
+had exhausted his talk the boy told him that kindness might work on
+ordinary horses, but this horse was the meanest animal in the world.
+He would bite and kick without any provocation, and the present owner
+couldn't sell him or give him away. He said that the only way he could
+be curried was to tie him up at both ends, and the only way he could be
+harnessed was to toss the harness on him with a pitch fork.
+
+The horse, with his head tied up so high that he could not use it,
+looked down at the humane man with one eye filled with emotion--the
+other eye had been knocked out years ago--and seemed to be thanking
+the kind-hearted citizen for interfering in the matinee and causing
+hostilities to be suspended. The humane man was touched by the
+intelligent look of the horse, and insisted that the animal be untied
+and allowed its freedom. The boy said he didn't dare untie him, for he
+would kick the side of the barn out, but the man insisted that he should
+release the horse, and went up to his head to do so, when the boy went
+through the manure hole in the side of the barn.
+
+What happened when the humane citizen untied the halter will perhaps
+never be definitely known, but no sooner had the boy struck the ground
+through the hole, than there was a sound of revelry in the barn, there
+came a yell through the crevices, there seemed to be a company of
+cavalry drilling on the barn floor, there was a sound as of cloth
+tearing, and then it appeared as though something was climbing up the
+inside of the barn, and after which the hind heels of the horse could be
+heard playing the snare drum on the manger. The boy roused the neighbors
+and they armed themselves and entered the barn. They found the horse in
+the stall, with its head where its tail should be, with its mouth full
+of pantaloons cloth, and kicking away as though its heart would break.
+
+And the humane man, where, O, where was he? Ask of the winds that far
+around with fragments of hat and coat tail strewed the barn floor.
+
+“Shoot the horse.” said a faint voice from the upper part of the barn,
+and every eye was turned in that direction. The humane man was up there,
+clinging to a cross piece. He had evidently gone up the ladder which
+led to the hay loft, a little ahead of the horse, and as he clung to the
+cross piece, his coat tail gone, and the vital part of his pantaloons
+and some skin gone to that bourne from whence no pantaloons seat
+returns, his bald head covered with dust and cobwebs, he was a picture
+of meekness.
+
+The crowd got the horse into another stall, head first, and put bars
+across, and the humane man came down from his perch. Seizing a barn
+shovel, and spitting on his hands, he asked his friends to wait and
+watch him curry off that horse just a minute for luck. He said he only
+wanted to live just long enough to maul every rib out of the animal, and
+if he was forgiven for interfering in somebody's else's business this
+time he would try and lead a different life in the future.
+
+They put a horse blanket around his wounds and led him home, and he has
+given the boy five dollars to pound the horse an hour every morning for
+the next thirty days. You can't make that man believe that a horse has
+any intelligence.
+
+
+
+
+RELIGION AND FISH.
+
+Newspaper reports of the proceedings of the Sunday School Association
+encamped on Lake Monona, at Madison, give about as many particulars
+of big catches of fish as of sinners. The delegates divide their time
+catching sinners on spoon-hooks and bringing pickerel to repentance.
+Some of the good men hurry up their prayers, and while the “Amen”
+ is leaving their lips they snatch a fish-pole in one hand and a
+baking-powder box full of angle worms in the other, and light out for
+the Beautiful Beyond, where the rock bass turn up sideways, and the
+wicked cease from troubling.
+
+Discussions on how to bring up children in the way they should go are
+broken into by a deacon with his nose peeled coming up the bank with a
+string of perch in one hand, a broken fish-pole in the other, and a pair
+of dropsical pantaloons dripping dirty water into his shoes.
+
+It is said to be a beautiful sight to see a truly good man offering up
+supplications from under a wide-brimmed fishing hat, and as he talks of
+the worm that never, or hardly ever dies, red angle worms that have dug
+out of the piece of paper in which they were rolled up are crawling out
+of his vest pocket.
+
+The good brothers compare notes of good places to do missionary work,
+where sinners are so thick you can knock them down with a club, and then
+they get boats and row to some place on the lake where a local liar has
+told them the fish are just sitting around on their haunches waiting for
+some one to throw in a hook.
+
+This mixing religion with fishing for black bass and pickerel is a
+good thing for religion, and not a bad thing for the fish. Let these
+Christian statesmen get “mashed” on the sport of catching fish, and they
+will have more charity for the poor man who, after working hard twelve
+hours a day for six days, goes out on a lake Sunday and soaks a worm in
+the water and appeases the appetite of a few of God's hungry pike, and
+gets dinner for himself in the bargain. While arguing that it is wrong
+to fish on Sunday, they will be brought right close to the fish, and
+can see better than before, that if a poor man is rowing a boat across a
+lake on Sunday, and his hook hangs over the stern, with a piece of liver
+on, and a fish that nature has made hungry tries to steal his line and
+pole and liver, it is a duty he owes to society to take that fish by the
+gills, put it in the boat and reason with it, and try to show it that
+in leaving its devotions on a Sunday and snapping at a poor man's only
+hook, it was setting a bad example.
+
+These Sunday school people will have a nice time, and do a great amount
+of good, if the fish continue to bite, and they can go home with their
+hearts full of the grace of God, their stomachs full of fish, their
+teeth full of bones; and if they fall out of the boats, and their
+suspenders hold out, they may catch a basin full of eels in the basement
+of their pantaloons.
+
+But we trust they will not try to compete with the local sports in
+telling fish stories. That would break up a whole Sunday school system.
+
+
+
+
+A DOCTOR OF LAWS.
+
+A doctor at Ashland is also a justice of the peace, and when he is
+called to visit a house he don't know whether he is to physic or to
+marry. Several times he has been, called out in the night, to the
+country, and he supposed some one must be awful sick, and he took a cart
+load of medicines, only to find somebody wanted marrying. He has been
+fooled so much that when he is called out now he carries a pill-bag and
+a copy of the statutes, and tells them to take their choice.
+
+He was called to one house and found a girl who seemed feverish. She was
+sitting up in a chair, dressed nicely, but he saw at once that the fatal
+flush was on her cheek, and her eyes looked peculiar. He felt of her
+pulse, and it was beating at the rate of two hundred a minute. He asked
+her to run out her tongue, and she run out eight or nine inches of the
+lower end of it. It was covered with a black coating, and he shook his
+head and looked sad. She had never been married any before, and supposed
+that it was necessary for a justice who was going to marry a couple to
+know all about their physical condition, so she kept quiet and answered
+questions.
+
+She did not tell him that she had been eating huckleberry pie, so he
+laid the coating on her tongue to some disease that was undermining her
+constitution. He put his ear on her chest and listened to the beating of
+her heart, and shook his head again.
+
+He asked her if she had been exposed to any contagious disease. She
+didn't know what a contagious disease was, but on the hypothesis that
+he had reference to sparking, she blushed and said she had, but only two
+evenings, because John had only just got back from the woods where he
+had been chopping, and she had to sit up with him.
+
+The doctor got out his pill-bags and made some quinine powders, and gave
+her some medicine in two tumblers, to be taken alternately, and told her
+to soak her feet and go to bed, and put a hot mustard poultice on her
+chest, and some onions around her neck.
+
+She was mad, and flared right up, and said she wasn't very well posted,
+and lived in the country, but if she knew her own heart she would not
+play such a trick as that on a new husband.
+
+The doctor got mad, and asked her if she thought he didn't understand
+his business; and he was about to go and let her die, when the
+bridegroom came in and told him to go ahead with the marrying. The doc
+said that altered the case. He said next time he came he should know
+what to bring, and then she blushed, and told him he was an old fool
+anyway, but he pronounced them man and wife, and said the prescription
+would be five dollars, the same as though there had been somebody sick.
+
+But the doc had cheek. Just as he was leaving he asked the bridegroom
+if he didn't want to ride up to Ashland with him, it was only eighteen
+miles, and the ride would be lonesome, but the bride said not if the
+court knew herself, and the bridegroom said now he was there he guessed
+he would stay. He said he didn't care much about going to Ashland
+anyway.
+
+
+
+
+THE DIFFERENCE IN HORSES.
+
+There has been a great change in livery horses within the last twenty
+years. Years ago, if a young fellow wanted to take his girl out riding,
+and expected to enjoy himself, he had to hire an old horse, the worst
+in the livery stable, that would drive itself, or he never could get his
+arm around his girl to save him. If he took a decent looking team, to to
+put on style, he had to hang on to the lines with both hands, and if
+he even took his eyes off the team to look at the suffering girl beside
+him, with his mouth, the chances were that the team would jump over a
+ditch, or run away, at the concussion. Riding out with girls was shorn
+of much of its pleasure in those days.
+
+We knew a young man that was going to put one arm around his girl if he
+did not lay up a cent, and it cost him over three hundred dollars. The
+team ran away, the buggy was wrecked, one horse was killed, the girl had
+her hind leg broken, and the girl's father kicked the young man all over
+the orchard, and broke the mainspring of his watch.
+
+It got so that the livery rig a young man drove was an index to his
+thoughts. If he had a stylish team that was right up on the bit, and
+full of vinegar, and he braced himself and pulled for all that was out,
+and the girl sat back in the corner of the buggy, looking as though she
+should faint away if a horse got his tail over a line, then people said
+that couple was all right, and there was no danger that they would be on
+familiar terms.
+
+But if they started out with a slow old horse that looked as though all
+he wanted was to be left alone, however innocent the party might look,
+people knew just as well as though they had seen it, that when they got
+out on the road, or when night came on, that fellow's arm would steal
+around her waist, and she would snug up to him, and--Oh, pshaw, you have
+heard it before.
+
+Well, late years the livery men have “got onto the racket,” as they say
+at the church sociables. They have found that horses that know their
+business are in demand, and so horses are trained for this purpose They
+are trained on purpose for out door sparking. It is not an uncommon
+thing to see a young fellow drive up to the house where his girl lives
+with a team that is just tearing things. They prance, and champ the bit,
+and the young man seems to pull on them as though his liver was coming
+out. The horses will hardly stand still long enough for the girl to get
+in, and then they start off and seem to split the air wide open, and
+the neighbors say, “Them children will get all smashed up one of these
+days.”
+
+The girl's mother and father see the team start, and their minds
+experience a relief as they reflect that “as long as John drives that
+frisky team there can't be no hugging a going on.” The girl's older
+sister sighs and says, “That's so,” and goes to her room and laughs
+right out loud.
+
+It would be instructive to the scientists to watch that team for a few
+miles. The horses fairly foam, before they get out of town, but striking
+the country road, the fiery steeds come down to a walk, and they mope
+along as though they had always worked on a hearse. The shady woods
+are reached, and the carriage scarcely moves, and the horses seem to be
+walking in their sleep. The lines are loose on the dash board, and the
+left arm of the driver is around the pretty girl, and they are talking
+low. It is not necessary to talk loud, as they are so near each other
+that the faintest whisper can be heard.
+
+But a change comes over them. A carriage appears in front, coming
+towards them. It may be some one that knows them. The young man picks
+up the lines, and the horses are in the air, and as they pass the other
+carriage it almost seems as though the team is running away, and the
+girl that was in sweet repose a moment before acts as though she wanted
+to get out. After passing the intruder the walk and conversation are
+continued.
+
+If you meet the party on the Whitefish Bay road at 10 o'clock at night,
+the horses are walking as quietly as oxen, and they never wake up until
+coming into town, and then he pulls up the team and drives through town
+like a cyclone, and when he drives up to the house the old man is on the
+steps, and he thinks John must be awful tired trying to hold that team.
+And he is.
+
+It is thought by some that horses have no intelligence, but a team that
+knows enough to take in a sporadic case of buggy sparking has got sense.
+These teams come high, but the boys have to have them.
+
+
+
+
+ADDICTED TO LIMBURG CHEESE.
+
+During the investigation of Chief Kennedy one witness testified to
+something that ought to make it hot for the chief. When men stoop to do
+the things that Mr. Chapin testified to, an outraged public sentiment
+has got to step in. Mr. Chapin testified--and he is a man whose word
+is as good as our note--he said he met Kennedy in a street car, and his
+breath smelled of limburg cheese. That is enough. Carry his remains out.
+
+Any man who will appear in a public place, among folks, with his breath
+smelling of limburg cheese, has got his opinion of us. It is simply
+damnable. We can see how a man who likes limburg cheese is liable,
+though he may have sworn off, to return to the mustard cup, and after
+the first taste, fill his skin full of cheese, arguing that one may as
+well die for an old sheep as a lamb.
+
+It is a well known fact, agreed to by all scientists, that a single
+mouthful' will tarnish an otherwise virtuous breath as much as a whole
+cheese. One mouthful of cheese leads on to another, and we are prepared
+to believe that if the chief smelled of cheese at all, he was full of
+it.
+
+Men cannot be too careful of cheese. If a man feels that he is going to
+commit the dastardly act of eating limburg cheese, he has time to go out
+to a glue factory, or a slaughter house, or the house of correction, or
+some other place whose offense is rank.
+
+The desire to eat cheese does not come upon a man suddenly, like the
+desire to take a drink, or stand off a creditor, and he is not taken
+possession of by the demon of appetite and pulled to the nearest saloon
+by a forty horse power devil, as is the man who has the jim jams.
+
+The cheese does its work more quietly. It whispers to him about 11
+o'clock a. m., and says there is nothing like cheese. He stands it off,
+and again in the afternoon the cheese takes possession of him and leads
+him on step by step, by green fields, and yet he does not fall. But
+about 9 o'clock p. m. the air seems full of cheese, and he smells it
+wherever he goes, and finally, after resisting for ten hours, he goes
+and orders a cheese sandwich.
+
+Now, when the feeling first comes on, and he shuts his eyes and imagines
+he sees limburg cheese, if the victim would go and buy a slice and go
+away out in the country, by the fertilizer factory, he could eat his
+cheese and no one but the workmen in the fertilizer factory could
+complain. That is what ought to be done when a man is addicted to
+cheese.
+
+But this chief of police has stood up in the face of public opinion,
+eaten limburg cheese with brazen effrontery that would do credit to a
+lawyer, and has gone into a public conveyance, breathing pestilence and
+cheese. There is no law on our statute books that is adequate to punish
+a man who will thus trample upon the usages of society.
+
+However, the conviction of Kennedy of eating limburg cheese will be the
+means of acquitting him of the other charge, that of conversing with a
+lewd woman. We doubt if there is a lewd woman, though she be terribly
+lewd, who would allow a man to come within several blocks of her who had
+been eating that deceased cheese.
+
+If we were in Kennedy's place we would admit the cheese, and then bring
+ten thousand women to swear whether they would remain in the same room
+with a man who had been eating that cheese. There are men who _do_
+eat cheese, bad men, the wicked classes, who go into the presence of
+females, but that is one thing which causes so many suicides among the
+poor fallen girls. When we hear that another naughty but nice looking
+girl has been filling her skin full of paregoric and is standing off
+a doctor with a stomach pump, we instinctively feel as though some man
+with a smell of cheese about his garments had been paying attention to
+her, and she had become desperate.
+
+If they discharge the chief on that cheese testimony it will be a lesson
+to all men hereafter.
+
+
+
+
+TERRIBLE TIME ON THE CARS.
+
+There is something about the average Chicago young man that gives
+him away, and gives away anybody that gets in with him. He is full of
+practical jokes, and is a bad egg on general principles.
+
+Last week Mr. Eppenetus Hoyt, of Fond du Lac, went to Chicago on a
+visit. He is a pious gentleman, whose candor would carry conviction
+to the mind of the seeker after righteousness, and his presence at the
+prayer meeting, at the sociable or the horse-race, is an evidence that
+everything will be conducted on the square.
+
+Mr. Hoyt knew a young man named Johnny Darling, who was attending
+Rush Medical College, and through him was permitted to visit the
+dissecting-room, and gaze upon the missionary work being done there. Mr.
+Hoyt was introduced to a number of the wicked young men who were carving
+the late lamented, and after he got accustomed to the climate he rather
+enjoyed the performance.
+
+Whether young Mr. Darling told the boys that Mr. Hoyt was “fresh” or
+not, will, perhaps, never be known; but, as Mr. Hoyt passed around among
+the slabs where they were at work, each made a contribution from the
+“stiff” he was at work upon to Mr. Hoyt's coat pockets unbeknown to him.
+While one was calling his attention to a limb that he was dissecting,
+another would cut off an ear, or a finger, or a nose, or dig out an eye,
+and drop the same into Mr. Hoyt's overcoat pockets. Finally, he bid the
+boys good-bye, thanked them for their courtesies in showing him around,
+told them if they ever came to Fond du Lac his pew in church was at
+their disposal, and he skipped for the train and got on board.
+
+The seats were all occupied, and a middle aged lady, with a slim face
+and spectacles, and evidently an old maid, allowed him to sit beside
+her. The car was warm, and it was not long before the “remains” began to
+be heard from. He was talking to the lady about the “sweet by-and-by,”
+ and the hope of a glorious immortality beyond the grave, and of the
+inducements held out by the good book to those who try to lead a
+different life here on earth, when he smelled something. The lady had
+been smelling it for some miles back, and she had got her eye on Mr.
+Hoyt, and had put her handkerchief to her nose. He took a long breath
+and said to the lady:
+
+“The air seems sort o' fixed here in this car, does it not?” and he
+looked up at the transom.
+
+“Yes,” said the lady, as she turned pale, and asked him to let her out
+of the seat, “it is very much fixed, and I believe _that you are the man
+that fixed it!_” and she took her satchel and went to the rear of
+the car, where she glared at him as though he was a fat rendering
+establishment.
+
+Mr. Hoyt devoted a few moments to silent prayer, and then his attention
+was called to a new married couple, in the seat ahead of him. They had
+been having their heads close together, when suddenly the bride said:
+
+“Hennery, have you been drinking?”
+
+He vowed by all that was great and glorious that he had not, when she
+told him there was something about his breath that reminded her of
+strong drink, or a packing-house.
+
+He allowed that it was not him, but admitted that he had noticed there
+was something wrong, though he didn't know but it was some of her teeth
+that needed filling.
+
+They were both mad at the insinuations of the other, and the bride
+leaned on the window and cried, while the groom looked the other way,
+and acted cross.
+
+Mr. Hoyt was very much annoyed at the smell.
+
+The smell remained, and people all around him got up and went to the
+forward end of the car, or to the rear, and there were a dozen empty
+seats when the conductor came in, and lots of people standing up. The
+conductor got one sniff, and said:
+
+“Whoever has got that piece of limberger cheese in his pocket, will have
+to go in the emigrant car!”
+
+They all looked at Hoyt, and the conductor went up to him and asked him
+if he didn't know any bettor than to be carrying around such cheese as
+that?
+
+Hoyt said he hadn't got no cheese.
+
+The conductor insisted that he had, and told him to turn his pockets
+wrong side out.
+
+Hoyt jabbed his hands into his pockets, and felt something cold and
+clammy. He drew his hands out empty, turned pale, and said he didn't
+have any cheese.
+
+The conductor insisted on his feeling again, and he brought to the
+surface a couple of human ears, a finger, and a thumb.
+
+“What in the name of the Apostles have you got there?” says the
+conductor. “Do you belong to any canning establishment that sends canned
+missionary to the heathen cannibals?”
+
+Hoyt told the conductor to come in the baggage car, and he would explain
+all; and as he passed by the passengers, with both hands full of the
+remains, the passengers were ready to lynch Hoyt. He told the conductor
+where he had been, and the boys had played it on him, and the fingers
+and things were thrown beside the track, where some one will find them
+and think a murder has been committed.
+
+Afterwards Hoyt went into the car and tried to apologize to the old
+maid, but she said if he didn't go away from her she would scream. Hoyt
+would always rather go away than have a woman scream.
+
+He is trying to think of some way to get even with the boys of Rush
+Medical College.
+
+
+
+
+CHANGED SATCHELS.
+
+There was one of those old fashioned mistakes occurred on the train from
+Monroe to Janesville a week or so ago. A traveling man and a girl who
+was going to Milton College sat in adjoining seats, and their satchels
+were exactly alike, and the traveling man took the wrong satchel and got
+off at Janesville, and the girl went on to Milton.
+
+The drummer went down to Vankirk's grocery and put his satchel on the
+counter, and asked Van how his liver was getting along, while he picked
+a piece off a codfish and ate it, and then smelled of his fingers and
+said “Whew!” Van said his liver was “not very torpid, thank you; how are
+you fixed for tea?” The drummer said he wished he had as many dollars as
+he was fixed for tea, and began to open his sample case. Van cut off
+a piece of cheese and was eating it while he walked along towards the
+drummer.
+
+When the case was opened the drummer fell over against a barrel of
+brooms, and grasping a keg of maple syrup for support, turned pale and
+said he'd be dashed. Van looked in the sample case, and said, “Fixed for
+tea! I should think you was, but it wasn't that kind of tea I want.”
+
+There was a long female night-shirt, clapboarded up in front with
+trimming and starch, and buttoned from Genesis to Revelations. Van took
+a butter tryer and lifted it out, and there was more than a peck measure
+full of stuff that never belonged in no grocery. Van said: “If you are
+traveling for a millinery house I will send a boy to direct you to a
+millinery store.”
+
+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.
+
+It is customary in all first-class choirs for the male singers to
+furnish candy for the lady singers, and the other day the tenor went
+to a candy factory and had a peppermint lozenger made with about half a
+teaspoonful of cayenne pepper in the centre of it. On Christmas he took
+his lozenger to church and concluded to get even with the soprano if he
+died for it.
+
+Candy had been passed around, and just before the hymn was given out
+in which the soprano was to sing a solo, “Nearer My God to Thee,” the
+wicked wretch gave her the loaded lozenger. She put it in her mouth and
+nibbed off the edges, and was rolling it as a sweet morsel under her
+tongue, when the organ struck up and they all arose. While the choir was
+skirmishing on the first part of the verse and getting scored up for the
+solo, she chewed what was left of the candy and swallowed it.
+
+Well, if a democratic torch-light procession had marched unbidden down
+her throat she couldn't have been any more astonished. She leaned over
+to pick up her handkerchief and spit the candy out, but there was enough
+pepper left around the selvage of her mouth to have pickled a peck of
+chow-chow.
+
+It was her turn to sing, and as she rose and took the book, her eyes
+filled with tears, her voice trembled, her face was as red as a spanked
+lobster, and the way she sung that old hymn was a caution. With a sweet
+tremulo she sung, “A Charge to Keep I Have,” and the congregation was
+almost melted to tears.
+
+As she stopped, while the organist got in a little work, she turned her
+head, opened her mouth and blew out her breath with a “whoosh,” to cool
+her mouth. The audience saw her wipe a tear away, but did not hear the
+sound of her voice as she “whooshed.” She wiped out some of the pepper
+with her handkerchief and sang the other verses with a good deal of
+fervor, and the choir sat down, all of the members looking at the
+soprano.
+
+She called for water. The noble tenor went and got it for her, and after
+she had drank a couple of quarts, she whispered to him: “Young man, I
+will get even with you for that peppermint candy if I have to live a
+thousand years, and don't you forget it,” and then they all sat down
+and looked pious, while the minister preached a most beautiful sermon
+on “Faith.” We expect that tenor will be blowed through the roof some
+Sunday morning, and the congregation will wonder what he is in such a
+hurry for.
+
+
+
+
+SENSE IN LITTLE BUGS.
+
+There is a cockroach that makes his home on our desk that has got more
+sense than a delinquent subscriber. He--if it is a he one; we are not
+clear as to that--comes out and sits on the side, of the paste-dish, and
+draws in a long breath. If the paste is fresh he eats it, and wiggles
+his polonaise as much as to thank us, and goes away refreshed. If
+the paste is sour, and smells bad, he looks at us with a mournful
+expression, and goes away looking as though it was a mighty mean trick
+to play on a cockroach, and he runs about as though he was offended.
+When a package of wedding cake is placed on the desk he is the first one
+to find it out, and he sits and waits till we cut the string, when he
+goes into it and walks all over the cake till he strikes the bridal
+cake, when he gets onto it, stands on his head and seems to say, “Yum,
+yum,” and is tickled as a girl with a fresh beau.
+
+There is human nature in a cockroach. When a man comes in and sits
+around with no business, on our busy day, and asks questions, and stays
+and keeps us from working, the cockroach will come out and sit on the
+inkstand and look across at the visitor as much as to say:
+
+“Why don't you go away about your business and leave the poor man alone,
+so he can get out some copy, and not keep us all standing around here
+doing nothing?”
+
+But when the paper is out, and there is a look of cheerfulness about
+the place, and we are anxious to have friends call, the cockroach flies
+around over the papers and welcomes each caller as pleasantly as he can,
+and seems to enjoy it.
+
+One day the paste smelled pretty bad, and we poured about a spoonful of
+whisky in it, and stirred it up. The cockroach came out to breakfast,
+and we never saw a person that seemed to enjoy the meal any more than
+the cockroach did. It seemed as though he couldn't get enough paste.
+Pretty soon he put one hand to his head and looked crosseyed. He tried
+to climb down off the paste-dish, and fell over himself and turned
+a flip-flap on the blotting paper. Then he looked at us in a sort of
+mysterious way, winked one eye as much as to say: “You think you are
+smart, don't you, old baldy?”
+
+Then he put one hand to his forehead as if in meditation, and staggered
+off into a drawer, coming out presently with his arm around another
+cockroach, and he took him to the paste-pot, and _he_ filled up, too,
+and then they locked arms and paraded up and down on the green cloth of
+the desk, as though singing, “We won't go home till morning,” and they
+kicked over the steel pens, and acted a good deal like politicians after
+a caucus.
+
+Finally, some remark was made by one of them that didn't suit, and they
+pitched in and had the worst fight that ever was, after which one rushed
+off as if after a policeman, and the other, staggered into his hole, and
+we saw no more of our cockroach till the next morning, when he came
+out with one hand on his head and the other on his stomach, and after
+smelling of the paste and looking sick, he walked off to a bottle of
+seltzer water and crawled up to the cork and looked around with an
+expression so human that we uncorked the bottle and let him in, and he
+drank as though he had been eating codfish. Since that day he looks at
+us a little suspicious, and when the paste smells a little peculiar he
+goes and gets another cockroach to eat some of it first, and he watches
+the effect.
+
+Now, you wouldn't believe it, but that cockroach can tell, the minute he
+sees a man, whether the man has come in with a bill, or has come in to
+pay money. We don't know how he does it, but when a man has a bill the
+cockroach begins to look solemn and mournful, and puts his hands to his
+eyes as though weeping. If a man comes in to pay money, the cockroach
+looks glad, a smile plays around his mouth, and he acts kitteny. He acts
+the most human when ladies come into the office. If a book agent comes
+in, he makes no attempt to show his disgust.
+
+One day an old person came in with a life of Garfield and laid it on
+the table, opened to the picture of the candidate, and left it. The
+cockroach walked through the violet ink and got his feet all covered,
+and then he walked all over that book, and left his mark. The woman saw
+the tracks, and thought we had signed our name, and she said she was
+sorry we had written our signature there, because she had another book
+for subscribers' names.
+
+When a handsome lady comes in, the cockroach is in his element, and
+there is a good deal of proud flesh about him. He puts his thumbs in the
+arm-holes of his vest and walks around.
+
+One day we put our face up to a deaf young lady to speak to her, and the
+cockroach looked straight the other way, and seemed to be looking over
+an old copy of the _Christian Statesman_; but when he found we only
+yelled at the lady, he winked as much as to say:
+
+“Well, how did I know?”
+
+O, that cockroach is a thoroughbred!
+
+
+
+
+SUMMER RESORTING.
+
+The other day a business man who has one of the nicest houses in the
+nicest ward in the city, and who has horses and carriages in plenty, and
+who usually looks as clean as though just out of a band box and as happy
+as a schoolma'am at a vacation picnic, got on a street car near the
+depot, a picture of a total wreck. He had on a long linen duster, the
+collar tucked down under the neck band of his shirt, which had no collar
+on, his cuffs were sticking out of his coat pocket, his eyes looked
+heavy, and where the dirt had come off with the perspiration he looked
+pale, and he was cross as a bear.
+
+A friend who was on the car, on the way up town, after a day's work,
+with a clean shirt on, a white vest and a general look of coolness,
+accosted the traveler as follows:
+
+“Been summer resorting, I hear?”
+
+The dirty-looking man crossed his legs with a painful effort, as though
+his drawers stuck to his legs and almost peeled the bark off, and
+answered:
+
+“Yes, I have been out two weeks. I have struck ten different hotels, and
+if you ever hear of my leaving town again during the hot weather, you
+can take my head for a soft thing,” and he wiped a cinder out of his eye
+with what was once a clean handkerchief.
+
+“Had a good, cool time, I suppose, and enjoyed yourself,” said the man
+who had not been out of town.
+
+“Cool time, hell,” said the man, who has a pew in two churches, as he
+kicked his limp satchel of dirty clothes under the car seat. “I had
+rather been sentenced to the house of correction for a month.”
+
+“Why, what's the trouble?”
+
+“Well, there is no trouble, for people who like that kind of fun, but
+this lets me out. I do not blame people who live in Southern States for
+coming North, because they enjoy things as a luxury that we who live in
+Wisconsin have as a regular diet, but for a Chicago or Milwaukee man to
+go into the country to swelter and be kept awake nights is bald lunacy.
+Why, since I have been out I have slept in a room a size smaller than
+the closet my wife keeps her linen in, with one window that brought in
+air from a laundry, and I slept on a cot that shut up like a jack-knife
+and always caught me in the hinge where it hurt.
+
+“At another hotel I had a broken-handled pitcher of water that had been
+used to rinse clothes in, and I can show you the indigo on my neck. I
+had a piece of soap that smelled like a tannery, and if the towel was
+not a recent damp diaper then I have never raised six children.
+
+“At one hotel I was the first man at the table, and two families came in
+and were waited on before the Senegambian would look at me, and after
+an hour and thirty minutes I got a chance to order some roast beef and
+baked potatoes, but the perspiring, thick-headed pirate brought me some
+boiled mutton and potatoes that looked as though they had been put in a
+wash-tub and mashed by treading on them barefooted. I paid twenty-five
+cents for a lemonade made of water and vinegar, with a piece of
+something on top that might be lemon peel, and it might be pumpkin rind.
+
+“The only night's rest I got was one night when I slept in a car seat.
+At the hotel the regular guests were kept awake till 12 o'clock by
+number six headed boys and girls dancing until midnight to the music of
+a professional piano boxer, and then for two hours the young folks sat
+on the stair? and yelled and laughed, and after that the girls went to
+bed and talked two hours more, while the boys went and got drunk and
+sang 'Allegezan and Kalamazoo.'
+
+“Why, at one place I was woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning by what I
+thought was a chariot race in the hall outside, but it was only a lot
+of young bloods rolling ten pins down by the rooms, using empty wine
+bottles for pins and China cuspidores for balls. I would have gone
+out and shot enough drunken galoots for a mess, only I was afraid a
+cuspidore would carom on my jaw. Talk about rest, I would rather go to a
+boiler factory.
+
+“Say, I don't know as you would believe it, but at one place I sent some
+shirts and things to be washed, and they sent to my room a lot of female
+underclothes, and when I kicked about it to the landlord he said I would
+have to wear them, as they had no time to rectify mistakes. He said the
+season was short and they had to get in their work, and he charged me
+Fifth Avenue Hotel prices with a face that was child-like and bland,
+when he knew I had been wiping on diapers for two days in place of
+towels.
+
+“But I must get off here and see if I can find water enough to bathe all
+over. I will see you down town after I bury these clothes.”
+
+And the sticky, cross man got off swearing at summer hotels and pirates.
+We don't see where he could have been traveling.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOSPEL CAR.
+
+Because there are cars for the luxurious, and smoking cars for those
+who delight in tobacco, some of the religious people of Connecticut are
+petitioning the railway companies to fit up “Gospel cars.” Instead
+of the card tables they want an organ and piano, they want the seats
+arranged facing the centre of the car, so they can have a full view of
+whoever may conduct the services; instead of spittoons they will have
+a carpet, and instead of cards they want Bibles and Gospel
+song-books.--_Chicago News_.
+
+There is an idea for you. Let some railroad company fit up a Gospel car
+according to the above prescription, and run it, and the porter on that
+car would be the most lonesome individual on the train. The Gospel hymn
+books would in a year appear as new as do now the Bibles that are put up
+in all cars. Of the millions of people who ride in the trains, many of
+them pious Christians, who has ever seen a man or woman take a Bible
+off the iron rack and read it a single minute? And yet you can often see
+ministers and other professing Christians in the smoking car, puffing a
+cigar and reading a daily paper.
+
+Why, it is all they can do to get a congregation in a church on Sunday;
+and does any one suppose that when men and women are traveling for
+business or pleasure--and they do not travel for anything else--that
+they are going into a “Gospel car” to listen to some sky pirate who has
+been picked up for the purpose, talk about the prospects of landing the
+cargo in heaven?
+
+Not much!
+
+The women are too much engaged looking after their baggage, and keeping
+the cinders out of their eyes, and keeping the children's heads out of
+the window, and keeping their fingers from being jammed, to look out for
+their immortal souls. And the men are too much absorbed in the object of
+their trip to listen to gospel truths. They are thinking about whether
+they will be able to get a room at the hotel, or whether they will have
+to sleep on a cot.
+
+Nobody can sing gospel songs on a car, with their throats full of
+cinders, and their eyes full of dust, and the chances are if anybody
+should strike up, “A charge to keep I have,” some pious sinner who was
+trying to take a nap in the corner of the gospel car would say:
+
+“O, go and hire a hall!”
+
+It would be necessary to make an extra charge of half a dollar to those
+who occupied the gospel car, the same as is charged on the parlor car,
+and you wouldn't get two persons on an average train full that would put
+up a nickel.
+
+Why, we know a Wisconsin Christian, worth a million dollars, who, when
+he comes up from Chicago to the place where he lives, hangs up his
+overcoat in the parlor car, and then goes into the forward car and rides
+till the whistle blows for his town, when he goes in and gets his coat
+and never says thirty-five cents to the conductor, or ten cents to the
+porter. Do you think a gospel car would catch him for half a dollar? He
+would see you in Hades first.
+
+The best way is to take a little eighteen carat religion along into the
+smoking car, or any other car you may happen to be in.
+
+A man--as we understand religion from those who have had it--does not
+have to howl to the accompaniment of an asthmatic organ, pumped by a
+female with a cinder in her eye and smut on her nose, in order to enjoy
+religion, and he does not have to be in the exclusive company of other
+pious people to get the worth of his money. There is a great deal of
+religion in sitting in a smoking car, smoking dog-leg tobacco in
+a briar-wood pipe, and seeing happy faces in the smoke that curls
+up--faces of those you have made happy by kind words, good deeds, or
+half a dollar put where it will drive away hunger, instead of paying it
+out for a reserved seat in a gospel car. Take the half dollar you would
+pay for a seat in a gospel car and go into the smoker, and find some
+poor emigrant that is going west to grow up with the country, after
+having been beaten out of his money at Castle Garden, and give it to
+him, and see if the look of thankfulness and joy does not make you feel
+better than to listen to a discussion in the gospel car, as to whether
+the children of Israel went through the Red Sea with life-preservers, or
+wore rubber hunting boots.
+
+Take your gospel-car half dollar and buy a vegetable ivory rattle of the
+train boy, and give it to the sick emigrant mother's pale baby, and
+you make four persons happy--the baby, the mother, the train boy and
+yourself.
+
+We know a man who gave a dollar to a prisoner on the way to State
+prison, to buy tobacco with, who has enjoyed more good square religion
+over it than he could get out of all the chin music and saw-filing
+singing he could hear in a gospel car in ten years. The prisoner was a
+bad man from Oshkosh, who was in a caboose in charge of the sheriff,
+on the way to Waupun. The attention of the citizen was called to
+the prisoner by his repulsive appearance, and his general
+don't-care-a-damative appearance. The citizen asked the prisoner how he
+was fixed for money to buy tobacco in prison. He said he hadn't a cent,
+and he knew it would be the worst punishment he could have to go without
+tobacco. The citizen gave him the dollar and said:
+
+“Now, every time you take a chew of tobacco in prison, just make up your
+mind to be square when you get out.”
+
+The prisoner reached out his hand-cuffed hands to take the dollar, the
+hands trembling so that the chains rattled, and a great tear as big as
+a shirt-button appeared in one eye--the other eye had been gouged out
+while “having some fun with the boys” at Oshkosh--and his lips trembled
+as he said:
+
+“So help me God, I will!”
+
+That man has been boss of a gang of hands in the pinery for two winters,
+and has a farm paid for on the Central Railroad, and is “squar.”
+
+That is the kind of practical religion a worldly man can occasionally
+practice without having a gospel car.
+
+
+
+
+INCIDENTS AT THE NEWHALL HOUSE FIRE.
+
+There were a great many ludicrous scenes about the Newhall House during
+the fire of last Saturday morning. When people were notified that there
+was a fire in the house, but that the danger was not great, though it
+was thought best to give them all plenty of time to prepare for the
+worst, many jumped right out of bed and started down stairs.
+
+When we arrived on the scene, our first inquiry was for the safety of
+the lady members of the Rice Surprise Party, the young women who had
+been cutting up on the stage all the week with so little apparel. We did
+not expect to find them in a greater state of barefootedness than they
+were when we saw them last, but in some instances they were.
+
+We were kindly yet firmly informed by Mr. Rankin that the ladies had
+been rescued. It seemed that everybody wanted to save the girls. Mr.
+Rankin knew this, and knew that if the young and thoughtless gentlemen
+were allowed to rescue the girls it would cause remark. He said he was
+an old line democrat, and that his days of kittenhood were over, and
+that it was proper that he should superintend the removal of the girls.
+
+Mr. McKittrick, the conductor, argued the matter with him. He said he
+had been running a train a good many years, and had seen all phases of
+humanity, and that he was inured to a life of hardship, and had seen
+many sad sights, in the sleeping cars, and he insisted that he be
+allowed to superintend the removal of the girls.
+
+The discussion became warm, and finally they compromised by agreeing
+that McKittrick should rush into the rooms and drag them out of the fire
+and smoke and hand them to Mr. Rankin at the foot of the first pair of
+stairs, who would dispose of them in safety. They both agreed that the
+first outside vandal who laid a hand on them should die.
+
+The first trouble they had was with Prof. Haskins.
+
+He came out of his room with nothing on but his glasses, an ascension
+robe and one boot. He rushed through the hall, and while in front of the
+room of the girl who wore the black tights with the crochet work on
+the limbs he ventured a joke. He is the telegraph manager and he said,
+“There is a line down here,” as a two inch stream struck him about the
+alleged pistol pocket. The girl, who was tying her wardrobe up in a
+napkin, heard him and said, “There is no _lying down_ here, not much.”
+ Prof. Haskins was shocked that any female should thus mistake him for a
+democrat, and falling over a zinc trunk head first, he went back to his
+room to send his son Harry out to help.
+
+Mr. McKittrick rushed into a room and grabbed a corset in his arms and
+handed it down stairs to Rankin There is no person who can fool Rankin.
+He didn't want to be rescued.
+
+Just at this point a girl with a waterproof on came along the hall and
+Mr. Cole asked her if she didn't want to be rescued. She said she had
+been carried down stairs six times already by a big granger, and she
+would shoot the next man that attempted to rescue ner. She said there
+was no danger, and wanted to know why the big galoots did not go and
+help put the fire out.
+
+On inquiry it was found that the girl had been carried down stairs six
+times and left on the sidewalk. She described the man who carried her
+out, and said he was excited, and no sooner would she get up stairs than
+he would grab her and carry her down again, until she was almost froze.
+He told her the last time that he had saved six girls from a fiery
+grave.
+
+
+
+
+THE WAY WOMEN BOSS A PILLOW.
+
+Among the recent inventions is a pillow holder. It is explained that the
+pillow holder is for the purpose of holding a pillow while the case is
+being put on. We trust this new invention will not come into general
+use, as there is no sight more beautiful to the eyes of man than to
+see a woman hold a pillow in her teeth while she gently manipulates the
+pillow case over it.
+
+We do not say that a woman is beautiful with her mouth full of pillows.
+No one can ever accuse us of saying that, but there is something
+home-like and old-fashioned about it that can not be replaced by any
+invention.
+
+We know that certain over-fastidious women have long clamored for some
+new method of putting on a pillow case, but these people have either
+lost their teeth, or the new ones do not grasp the situation. They
+have tried several new methods, such as blowing the pillow case up, and
+trying to get the pillow in before the wind got out, and they have tried
+to get the pillow in by rolling up the pillow case until the bottom is
+reached, and then placing 'the pillow on end and gently unrolling the
+pillow case, but all these schemes have their drawbacks.
+
+The old style of chewing one end of the pillow, and holding it the way
+a retriever dog holds a duck, till the pillow case is on, and then
+spanking the pillow a couple of times on each side, is the best, and it
+gives the woman's jaws about the only rest they get during the day.
+
+If any invention drives this old custom away from us, and we no more
+see the matrons of our land with their hair full of feathers and their
+mouths full of striped bed-ticking, we shall feel that one of the
+dearest of our institutions has been ruthlessly torn from us, and the
+fabric of our national supremacy has received a sad blow, and that our
+liberties are in danger.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEADLY PAPER BAG
+
+There is a woman on the West Side who has learned a lesson that will
+last her a lifetime. She has been for years wearing these paper bags,
+such as the green grocers use, for bustles. The paper is stiff, and
+sticks out splendid, and makes the dress look well. Last Sunday morning
+while she was dressing, her young son got in the room and blew the paper
+bag full of wind and tied a string around the mouth of it, and left it
+in a chair. The good lady took it and tied it on and dressed herself for
+church. She bribed her husband to go to church with her, though he is a
+sort of Bob Ingersoll christian.
+
+As they went down the aisle the minister was reading a hymn about
+“Sounding the Loud Hosan-na,” and the lady went into the pew first, and
+sat down while her husband was putting his hat on the floor. There was
+a report like distant thunder. You have heard how those confounded paper
+bags explode when boys blow them up, and crush them between their hands.
+
+Well, it was worse than that, and everybody looked at the innocent
+husband, who was standing there a perfect picture of astonishment. He
+looked at his wife as much as to say: “Now, this is the last time you
+will catch me in church, if you are going to play any of your tricks on
+me. You think you can scare me into getting religion?”
+
+The minister stopped reading the hymn and looked over his spectacles
+at the new comers as though it would not surprise him if that bad man
+should blow the church up. The poor lady blushed and looked around as
+much as to say, “I did not know it was loaded,” and she looked the hymn
+book through for the hymn, and as the choir rose to sing she offered one
+side of the book to her husband, but he looked mad and pious, and stood
+at the other end of the pew and looked out of the stained glass window.
+
+After the service they started home together, and as they turned the
+first corner he said to his wife, “Well, you played hell on your watch,
+didn't you?” She told him there was no such thing as hell in the Bible
+now, but that she would make that boy think there had been no revision
+of the Bible that left hell out, when she got home. We only get the
+story from the husband.
+
+He said he didn't know what it was that made the noise until they got
+home, and after a little skirmishing around his wife held up a bursted
+paper bag, and asked the boy if he blew that bag up. He said he did,
+but he did not know there was anything wrong about it. The boy and his
+mother and a press board paid a visit to the back kitchen, and there was
+a sound of revelry. Boys will be boys.
+
+
+
+
+THE VIRGINIA DUEL.
+
+The proposed duel between Senator Mahone and Jubal Early did not come
+off, for reasons that have not been made public. It is well known
+that Mahone is the thinnest man in Virginia. We do not allude to his
+politics, or his ability, in speaking of his being thin, but to his
+frame. He does not make a shadow. He could hide behind a wire fence.
+Gen. Early, after challenging Mahone, went to practicing at a piece of
+white wire clothes line, hung to the limb of a tree, but he could not
+hit it, and he felt that all the advantage would be on Mr. Mahone's
+side, so he asked Mahone to do the only thing in his power that would
+make the thing even, and that was to eat a quantity of dried apples
+the day before the duel, in order to swell his stomach out so that a
+gentleman could stand some show of hitting him.
+
+Gen. Early pledged himself, on the honor of a Virginia gentleman, that
+he would not shoot at Mahone's stomach, but would aim at it, and then
+make a line shot either above or below.
+
+Mahone replied that, while he appreciated the advantage he had over his
+opponent, and was willing to do anything reasonable to make the
+thing even, he could not consistently eat dried apples, as they would
+certainly kill him. He was willing to take his chances on the bullets
+of his opponent, because statistics showed that dueling was the most
+healthy business a man could engage in; and he pointed to the number
+of duellists that were now living at a ripe old age, who had fought
+hundreds of duels and never received a scratch or scratched an opponent,
+but on the other hand he could produce proof to show that many people
+had been injured, if not killed, by an over-indulgence in dried apples.
+
+Mr. Mahone said he thought it was late in the day for him to produce any
+proof as to his own bravery, but in the face of the fact that he would
+be pointed at as one who had not sand, he should have to decline to eat
+dried apples in order to make himself a target.
+
+Gen. Early said he appreciated the delicacy of his honorable and
+high-toned opponent, and respected his feelings, and would not insist
+on the dried apple act, but that he would go into training to reduce
+himself in flesh to the size of Mahone, and hoped that the affair might
+be declared off until he could diet himself. He said he should at once
+begin a course of treatment to reduce his flesh, by boarding at a summer
+resort hotel that he had heard of, where the desired effect might be
+produced.
+
+So the duel is postponed for the present. Both Mahone and Early are
+high-toned gentlemen, and they will do nothing rash.
+
+
+
+
+THE DIFFERENCE.
+
+One of the great female writers on dress reform, in trying to illustrate
+how terrible the female dress is, says:
+
+“Take a man and pin three or four table-cloths about him, fastened back
+with elastic and looped up with ribbons, draw all his hair to the middle
+of his head and tie it tight, and hairpin on five pounds of other hair
+and a big bow of ribbon. Keep the front locks on pins all night, and let
+them tickle his eyes all day, pinch his waist into a corset, and give
+him gloves a size too small and shoes the same, and a hat that will not
+stay on without torturing elastic, and a little lace veil to blind his
+eyes whenever he goes out to walk, and he will know what a woman's dress
+is.”
+
+Now you think you have done it, don't you, sis? Why, bless you, that
+toggery would be heaven compared to what a man has to contend with. Take
+a woman and put a pair of men's four-shilling drawers on her that are so
+tight that when they get damp, from perspiration, sis; they stick so you
+can't cross your legs without an abrasion of the skin, the buckle in
+the back turning a somersault and sticking its points into your spinal
+menengitis; put on an undershirt that draws across the chest so you feel
+as though you must cut a hole in it, or two, and which is so short that
+it works up under your arms, and allows the starched upper shirt to sand
+paper around and file off the skin until you wish it was night, the tail
+of which will not stay tucked more than half a block, though you tuck,
+and tuck, and tuck; and then fasten a collar made of sheet zinc, two
+sizes too small for you, around your neck; put on vest and coat, and
+liver pad and lung pad and stomach pad, and a porous plaster, and a
+chemise shirt between the two others, and rub on some liniment, and put
+a bunch of keys and a jack-knife and a button-hook and a pocket-book and
+a pistol and a plug of tobacco in your pockets, so they will chafe your
+person, and then go and drink a few whisky cocktails, and walk around
+in the sun with tight boots on, sis, and then you will know what a man's
+dress is.
+
+Come to figure it up, it is about an even thing, sis,--isn't it?
+
+
+
+
+SPURIOUS TRIPE.
+
+Another thing that is being largely counterfeited is tripe. Parties who
+buy tripe cannot be too careful. There is a manufactory that can make
+tripe so natural that no person on earth can detect the deception. They
+take a large sheet of rubber about a sixteenth of an inch thick for a
+background, and by a process only known to themselves veneer it with
+a Turkish towel, and put it in brine to soak. The unsuspecting
+boarding-house keeper, or restaurant man, buys it and cooks it, and
+the boarder or transient guest calls for tripe. A piece is cut off the
+damnable tripe with a pair of shears used in a tin shop for cutting
+sheet iron, and it is handed to the victim. He tries to cut it,
+and fails; he tries to gnaw it off, and if he succeeds in getting a
+mouthful, that settles him. He leaves his tripe on his plate, and it
+is gathered up and sewed on the original piece, and is kept for another
+banquet.
+
+The tripe is expensive, owing to the royalty that has to be paid to the
+rubber company, and often the boarder succeeds in eating off some of the
+towel, so it has to be veneered over again; but take it the year round,
+and the tripe pays its way in a boarding-house.
+
+
+
+
+A CASE OF PARALYSIS.
+
+About as mean a trick as we ever heard of was perpetrated by a doctor at
+Hudson last Sunday. The victim was a justice of the peace named Evans.
+Mr. Evans is a man who has the alfiredest biggest feet east of St. Paul,
+and when he gets a new pair of shoes it is an event that has its effect
+on the leather market.
+
+Last winter he advertised for sealed proposals to erect a pair of
+shoes for him, and when the bids were opened it was found that a local
+architect in leather had secured the contract, and after mortgaging his
+house to a Milwaukee tannery, and borrowing some money on his diamonds
+of his “uncle,” John Comstock, who keeps a pawnbrokery there, he broke
+ground for the shoes.
+
+Owing to the snow blockade and the freshets, and the trouble to get
+hands who would work on the dome, there were several delays, and Judge
+Evans was at one time inclined to cancel the contract, and put some
+strings in box cars and wear them in place of shoes, but sympathy for
+the contractor, who had his little awl invested in the material and
+labor, induced him to put up with the delay.
+
+On Saturday the shoes were completed, all except laying the floor and
+putting on a couple of bay windows for corns, and conservatories for
+bunions, and the judge concluded to wear them on Sunday. He put them on,
+but got the right one on the left foot, and the left one on the right
+foot. As he walked down town the right foot was continually getting on
+the left side, and he stumbled over himself, and he felt pains in his
+feet. The judge was frightened in a minute. He is afraid of paralysis,
+all the boys know it, and when he told a wicked republican named Spencer
+how his feet felt, that degraded man told the judge that it was one of
+the surest symptoms of paralysis in the world, and advised him to hunt a
+doctor.
+
+The judge pranced off, interfering at every step, skinning his shins,
+and found Dr. Hoyt. The doctor is one of the worst men in the world, and
+when he saw how the shoes were put on he told the judge that his case
+was hopeless unless something was done immediately. The judge turned
+pale, the sweat poured out of him, and taking out his purse he gave the
+doctor five dollars and asked him what he should do. The doctor felt his
+pulse, looked at his tongue, listened at his heart, shook his head, and
+then told the judge that he would be a dead man in less than sixty years
+if he didn't change his shoes.
+
+The judge looked down at the vast expanse of leather, both sections
+pointing inwardly, and said, “Well, dam a fool,” and “changed cars” at
+the junction. As he got them on the right feet, and hired a raftsman to
+tie them up for him, he said he would get even with the doctor if he had
+to catch the smallpox. O, we suppose they have more fun in some of these
+country towns than you can shake a stick at.
+
+
+
+
+MALE AND FEMALE MASHING.
+
+There has been a great deal of talk in the papers about arresting
+“mashers,” that is, young men who stand on the corners and pulverize
+women, and a great many good people got the idea that it was unsafe to
+travel the streets. This is not the case. A woman might travel all
+day and half the night and not be insulted. Of course, once in a great
+while, a woman will be insulted by a man, the same as a man will be by a
+woman.
+
+No woman, unless she throws out one eye, kind of cunning, is in danger
+of having a male man throw out his other eye the same way. There has got
+to be two parties to a mashing match, and one must be a woman. Too many
+women act sort of queer just for fun, and the poor male man gets to
+acting improper before he realizes the enormity of the crime, and then
+it is everlastingly too late.
+
+But a female masher, one who is thoroughly bad, like the male loafers
+that have been driven from the corners, is a terror. She will insult a
+respectable man and laugh at his blushes. One of them was arrested the
+other day for playing her act on a policeman who was disguised as a
+respectable granger from Stevens Point. These female mashers are a
+tornado.
+
+Why, one of them met a respectable church member the other night,
+and asked him how his liver complaint was. He was a man who had
+been troubled with the liver complaint, and supposing she was some
+acquaintance, he stopped on the corner and talked with the pullet for
+about ten minutes, explaining to her the course of treatment he had used
+to cure him, and dozens of people passing by that knew him, and knew
+that she was clear off.
+
+Finally she asked him if he wouldn't take her to a restaurant and buy
+her a spring chicken and a small bottle. He told her if she would come
+up to his house she should have a hen, and there were lots of bottles,
+both large and small, that she was welcome to. She told him to go to
+Hades, and he went in a drug store and asked a clerk who that lady was
+he had been talking with, and when the clerk, who knew her, told him she
+was a road agent, a street walker, a female masher, the old man had to
+sit down on a box of drugs and fan himself with his hat.
+
+We mention this to show that ladies are not the only portion of the
+population that is liable to be accosted and insulted. The other night
+a respectable merchant was going to the opera with a friend from the
+country, when a couple of sirens met them and one said to the other,
+“Look at his nibs,” and she locked arms with him and asked him if he was
+not her own darling. He said his name was not “Nibs,” and he would have
+to look at his memorandum book before he could tell whether he was her
+darling or not, but from the smell of gin about her person he would
+blush to extemporize.
+
+We do not give his exact language, but in the heat of debate he shook
+her and told her if she ever clawed on him again he would everlastingly
+go and tell her parents. And while he was talking with her the other one
+had seated herself beside his country friend on a salt barrel in front
+of a grocery and was feeling in his vest pocket to see if he had any
+cloves.
+
+A female masher is much worse than a male masher as you can imagine.
+Who ever heard of a male masher feeling in an unprotected female's vest
+pocket for cloves? O, the men are simply unprotected, and at the mercy
+of wicked, designing women, and the police ought to protect them.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+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 door 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
+tobacco, 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.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+Three distinct charges of heresy will be made against Rev. Dr. Thomas,
+of Chicago, at the trial next month. The amount of heresy that is going
+on in this country, and particularly among ministers, is truly alarming.
+The names of his partners in guilt are not mentioned, probably out
+of respect for their families. A minister that goes around practicing
+heresy ought to be watched, and when caught at it he should be bounced.
+There is no excuse for _heresy_, though a minister will occasionally
+meet a mighty attractive _her_, but he should say: “Git thee foreninst
+me, Susan, and when I have a convenient season I will send the police
+after thee.”
+
+
+*****
+
+
+There should be an amendment to the constitution of the United States
+making it lawful for an ex-President to walk on grass. We have no great
+admiration for Hayes, but when we read that at Cleveland he was ordered
+off the grass by a thirteen dollar a month soldier, and had to shin
+it-over a fence real spry to save the shoulder of his pants from assault
+by a cheap bayonet, it makes us feel ashamed, and we blush for America.
+The spectacle of a man who has occupied the White House, and been the
+chief attraction of county fairs, being compelled to put his stomach on
+a fence, and flop over, heels over appetite, like a boy playing tag, to
+keep from being jabbed in a vital part, makes us sick.
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW COAL STOVE.
+
+We never had a coal stove around the house until last Saturday. Have
+always used pine slabs and pieces of our neighbor's fence. They burn
+well, too, but the fence got all burned up, and the neighbor said he
+wouldn't build a new one, so we went down to Jones' and got a coal
+stove.
+
+You see, we didn't know anything about coal stoves. We filled the stove
+about half full of pine fence, and, when the stuff got well to going, we
+filled the artesian well on the top with coal. It simmered and sputtered
+about five or ten minutes, and all went out, and we put on an overcoat
+and a pair of buckskin mittens and “went out too”--to supper. We
+remarked, in the course of the frugal meal, that Jones was a “froad” for
+recommending such a confounded refrigerator to a man to get warm by.
+
+After supper we took a piece of ice and rubbed our hands warm, and went
+in where that stove was, resolved to make her draw and burn if it took
+all the pine fence in the First Ward. Our better-half threw a quilt
+over her, and shiveringly remarked that she never knew what real solid
+comfort was until she got a coal stove.
+
+Stung by the sarcasm in her remark, we turned every dingus on the stove
+that was movable, or looked like it had anything to do with the draft,
+and pretty soon the stove began to heave up heat. It was not long before
+she stuttered like the new Silsby steamer. Talk about your heat! In
+ten minutes that room was as much worse than a Turkish bath as Hades is
+hotter than Liverman's ice-house. The perspiration fairly fried out of
+a tin water cooler in the next room. We opened the doors, and snow began
+to melt as far up Vine street as Hanscombe's house, and people all
+round the neighborhood put on linen clothes. And we couldn't stop the
+confounded thing.
+
+We forgot what Jones told us about the dampers, and she kept a biling.
+The only thing we could do was to go to bed, and leave the thing to burn
+the house up if it wanted to. We stood off with a pole and turned the
+damper every way, and at every turn she just sent out heat enough to
+roast an ox. We went to bed, supposing that the coal would eventually
+burn out, but about 12 o'clock the whole family had to get up and sit on
+the fence.
+
+Finally a man came along who had been brought up among coal stoves, and
+he put a wet blanket over him and crept up to the stove and turned the
+proper dingus, and she cooled off, and since that time has been just as
+comfortable as possible. If you buy a coal stove you want to learn how
+to engineer it, or you may get roasted.
+
+
+
+
+A COLD, CHEERLESS RIDE.
+
+Probably the most cold-blooded affair that ever occurred took place at
+a certain summer resort a couple of weeks ago. There was going to be
+a picnic, and a young man and the girl he was engaged to be married to
+started in a row-boat to cross the lake, taking an ice cream freezer
+full of frozen ice cream for the picnic. Just before arriving at the
+picnic the boat capsized. The boat was bottom side up, and the young man
+helped the girl on to the ice cream freezer, and he got on the boat, and
+after floating for half an hour they were rescued.
+
+The girl did not complain at the time she was put on the freezer, as she
+was glad enough to get on anything that would float, but after they got
+ashore, and she had a chance to reflect on the matter, and talk with the
+other girls, she concluded that his getting on the boat, which was nice
+and warm, and putting her aboard the ice cream freezer, which was so
+cold and cheerless, was a breach of etiquette that would stamp any man
+as being a selfish, heartless villain, and she refuses to speak to him,
+and has declared the engagement off.
+
+He is very much mortified over the affair, and tries to explain that he
+was more accustomed to a boat than she was, while he reasoned that she
+would naturally be more familiar with an ice cream freezer. It certainly
+looks to us to have been a cold-blooded transaction, and while the young
+man might have been rattled, and powerless to grasp the situation as he
+would if he had it to do over again, the girl is certainly justified in
+being indignant.
+
+An ice cream freezer is a cold and cheerless companion even when empty,
+but filled with congealed cream and pounded ice, and in water, it cannot
+but have been an Arctic exploration on a small scale. Besides the ice,
+it is a notorious fact that ice cream freezers are made of zinc, the
+coldest metal in the world, if we bar women's feet.
+
+“Sheridan's Ride” has been spoken of in poetry and in song, but it pales
+into insignificance by the side of this girl's ride on the ice cream
+freezer. If the young man had exhibited foresight, and had a side saddle
+buckled on to the ice cream freezer, the experience would have been
+robbed of much of its frigidity, or if there had been a thick blanket
+under the saddle, but he failed to take even that precaution.
+
+As it is we do not blame the girl for breaking off the engagement. In
+addition, we think any court would decide that he should pay for the
+ginger tea and cough lozenges that she had to take to cure her cold.
+
+
+
+
+SOME TALK ABOUT MONOPOLIES.
+
+We know it is fashionable for people to talk about the great monopolies,
+the railroads, and show how they are sapping the life-blood from the
+farmers by arranging facilities for transporting wheat worth forty cents
+a bushel in store pay, without railroads, to a market where the farmer
+realizes nearly a dollar a bushel in cash.
+
+Demagogues ring the changes on these monopolies, tell how the directors
+ride in palace cars and drink wine, from the proceeds of the millions of
+dollars invested in railroads, though they never mention the fact that
+the railroads have made it possible for farmers to give up driving ox
+teams and ride after horses that can trot in 2:40.
+
+We presume that railroad managers like to get a pretty good dividend on
+their investments, but do they get a better dividend than farmers do
+on some of their investments? Do you know of any farmer that ever
+complained that his produce was selling too high? If you complain
+at paying eight dollars for a jag of crow's nest wood during a snow
+blockade, does he argue with, you, to show that he is a monopoly, or
+does he tell you that if you don't want the wood you needn't have it?
+
+Now, talking of railroad men manipulating stock, and taking advantage of
+a raise, how is it about eggs? Within the last two months there has been
+the worst corner on eggs that the world has ever seen, and the dividends
+that farmers have received on their investments have been so enormous
+that they must blush for shame, unless they are a soulless corporation.
+
+Now, for instance, a farmer paid twenty-five cents for a good average
+hen the 1st of December. Before the 1st of February that hen has laid
+five dozen eggs, which are worth two dollars and a half. Take out five
+cents for feed, two cents for the society that the hen has enjoyed, and
+there is a clear profit of two dollars and forty-three cents, and
+the farmer has got the hen left. Did any railroad wrecker ever make a
+greater percentage than that? Talk about watering stock, is it any worse
+than feeding a hen, to make her lay four-shilling eggs?
+
+We have it from good authority that some farmers have actually gone so
+far as to bribe legislators with eggs, to prevent their passing any law
+fixing a rate for the sale of eggs. This is a serious charge, and we do
+not vouch for it. It is probable that farmers who are sharp enough to
+get a corner on eggs, by which they can be run up to a fictitious value,
+are sharp enough not to lay themselves liable for bribery by giving eggs
+directly to the members, but there are ways to avoid that. They can send
+them to the residences of the members, where they are worth their weight
+in gold almost.
+
+Rich railroad owners have submitted to this soulless monopoly of the egg
+business as long as they can, and we learn that they have organized a
+state grange, with grips and passwords, and will institute subordinate
+lodges all over the State to try and break up this vile business that is
+sapping their life-blood.
+
+Already a bill has been prepared for introduction into the legislature
+to prohibit any manipulation of the egg market in the future. “Shall the
+farmers of the State be allowed to combine with hens and roosters and
+create a famine in eggs, an article of food on which so many people rely
+to keep soul and body together?” they ask.
+
+Our heart has bled, in the last sixty days, as well as our pocket-book,
+while studying this question. We have seen men of wealth going about the
+streets crying for an egg to cool their parched tongues, and they have
+been turned away eggless, and gone to their palatial homes only to
+suffer untold agonies, the result of those unholy alliances between
+farmers and hens. They have tossed sleeplessly on their downy beds,
+wondering if there was no balm in Gilead, no rooster there. They have
+looked in vain for compassion on the part of the farmers, who haye only
+laughed at their sufferings, and put up the price of eggs.
+
+The time has arrived for action on the part of the wealthy consumers
+of eggs, and we are glad the State grange has been formed. Let a
+few determined men get together in every community, and swear by the
+bald-headed profit that they will put down this hen monopoly or die,
+and after they have sworn, let them send to us for a charter for a
+lodge--enclosing two dollars in advance--and we will forward to them the
+ritual of the order.
+
+If this thing is allowed to go on for five years these farmers will be
+beyond the power of the government to control. This is a grave question,
+and if the wealthy people do not get relief we might as well bid
+farewell to our American institutions, as the liberty for which our
+forefathers fought will not be worth paying taxes for.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+There is no person in the world who is easier to overlook the
+inconsistencies that show themselves on the stage at theatres than we
+are, but once in a while there is something so glaring that it pains us.
+We have seen actors fight a duel in a piece of woods far away from any
+town, on the stage, and when one of them fell, pierced to the heart with
+a sword, we have noticed that he fell on a Brussels carpet. That is all
+wrong, but we have stood it manfully.
+
+We have seen a woman, on the stage who was so beautiful that we could be
+easily mashed if we had any heart left to spare. Her eyes were of that
+heavenly color that has been written about heretofore, and her smile
+as sweet as ever was seen, but behind the scenes, through the wings, we
+have seen her trying to dig the cork out of a beer bottle with a pair of
+shears, and ask a supe, in harsh tones, where the cork-screw was, while
+she spread mustard on a piece of cheese, and finally drank the beer
+from the bottle, and spit the pieces of cork out on the floor, sitting
+astride of a stage chair, and her boot heels up on the top round, her
+trail rolled up into a ball, wrong side out, showing dirt from forty
+different stage floors.
+
+These things hurt. But the worst thing that has ever occurred to knock
+the romance out of us, was to see a girl in the second act, after
+“twelve years is supposed to elapse,” with the same pair of red
+stockings on that she wore in the first act, twelve years before. Now,
+what kind of a way is that? It does not stand to reason that a girl
+would wear the same pair of stockings twelve years. Even if she had them
+washed once in six months, they would be worn out. People notice these
+things.
+
+What the actresses of this country need is to change their stockings. To
+wear them twelve years, even in their minds, shows an inattention to
+the details and probabilities of a play, that must do the actresses
+an injury, if not give them corns. Let theatre-goers insist that the
+stockings be changed oftener, in these plays that sometimes cover half
+a century, and the stockings will not become moth-eaten. Girls, look to
+the little details. Look to the stockings, as your audiences do, and you
+will see how it is yourselves.
+
+
+
+
+A BALD-HEADED MAN MOST CRAZY.
+
+Last Wednesday the bell to our telephone rung violently at 8 o'clock in
+the morning, and when we put our ear to the earaphone, and our mouth
+to the mouthaphone, and asked what was the matter, a still small voice,
+evidently that of a lady, said, “Julia has got worms, doctor.”
+
+We were somewhat taken back, but supposing Julia was going fishing, we
+were just going to tell her not to forget to spit on her bait, when a
+male voice said, “O, go to the devil, will you?” We couldn't tell whose
+voice it was, but it sounded like the clerk at the Plankinton House, and
+we sat down.
+
+There is no man who will go further to accommodate a friend than we
+will, but by the great ethereal there are some things we will not do to
+please anybody. As we sat and meditated, the bell rung once more, and
+then we knew the wires had got tangled, and that we were going to have
+trouble all day. It was a busy day, too, and to have a bell ringing
+beside one's ear all day is no fun.
+
+The telephone is a blessed thing when it is healthy, but when its liver
+is out of order it is the worst nuisance on record. When it is out
+of order that way you can hear lots of conversation that you are not
+entitled to. For instance, we answered the bell after it had rung
+several times, and a sweet little female voice said, “Are you going to
+receive to-morrow?” We answered that we were going to receive all the
+time. Then she asked what made us so hoarse? We told her that we had sat
+in a draft from the bank, and it made the cold chills run over us to pay
+it. That seemed to be satisfactory, and then she began to tell us what
+she was going to wear, and asked if we thought it was going to be too
+cold to wear a low neck dress and elbow sleeves. We told her that was
+what we were going to wear, and then she began to complain that her new
+dress was too tight in various places that she mentioned, and when the
+boys picked us up off the floor and bathed our temples, and we told them
+to take her away, they thought we were crazy.
+
+If we have done wrong in talking with a total stranger, who took us for
+a lady friend, we are willing to die. We couldn't help it. For an hour
+we would not answer the constant ringing of the bell, but finally the
+bell fluttered as though a tiny bird had lit upon the wire and was
+shaking its plumage. It was not a ring, but it was a tune, as though an
+angel, about eighteen years old, a blonde angel, was handling the other
+end of the transmitter, and we felt as though it was wrong for us to sit
+and keep her in suspense, when she was evidently dying to pour into our
+auricular appendage remarks that we ought to hear.
+
+And still the bell did flut. We went to the cornucopia, put our ear to
+the toddy stick and said, “What ailest thou darling, why dost thy hand
+tremble? Whisper all thou feelest to thine old baldy.” Then there
+came over the wire and into our mansard by a side window the following
+touching remarks: “Matter enough. I have been ringing here till I have
+blistered my hands. We have got to have ten car loads of hogs by day
+after to-morrow or shut down.” Then there was a stuttering, and then
+another voice said, “Go over to Loomis' pawn shop. A man shot in”--and
+another voice broke in, singing, “The sweet by and by, we shall meet
+on that beautiful”--and another voice said--“girl I ever saw. She was
+riding with a duffer, and wiped her nose as I drove by in the street
+car, and I think she is struck after me.”
+
+It was evident that the telephone was drunk, and we went out in the hall
+and wrote on a barrel all the afternoon, and gave it full possession of
+the office.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+Mr. Peck was recently extended an invitation to be present at a meeting
+of the Iowa Commercial Travelers' Association, at Des Moines, and
+respond to the toast: “Our Wives and Sweethearts, and Little Ones at
+Home.” He couldn't be present, but he responded all the same, in the
+following manner:
+
+“That is the sweetest toast that man was ever called upon to respond to.
+Very few traveling men who have good wives, loving sweethearts, and dear
+little children at home, sending loving messages to them, often ever
+stray very far from the straight and narrow path. There is no class of
+men on earth that has greater temptations and better opportunities to be
+'cusses on wheels' than the traveling men of the Northwest; and when I
+say that they stand up under it a confounded sight better than the same
+number of ministers or editors would, I don't want you to think I am
+giving you any confectionery from my sample case.
+
+“Through snows of winter, mud of spring and fall, and heat of summer,
+the traveling man makes his connections and sends in his orders, and
+seems to enjoy religion with the best of them. But the happiest days
+for him and the shortest are those he spends at home with his wife, the
+children or sweet-heart. There can be more tears brought to the eyes of
+the traveling man by a little child putting its arms around his neck and
+saying, 'My dear, precious papa,' than could be brought out by any other
+press I know of, however powerful.
+
+“I know there is occasionally a traveling man who always has his sign
+out ready to be mashed, but he never neglects his business for any
+foolish-ness. He would leave the finest country flirt that ever winked a
+wink to sell a bill of brown sugar on sixty days' time.
+
+“It is said that the average traveling man will keep a whole seat in a
+car, and never offer to give half of it to a man, when, if a handsome
+woman comes in, he will fly around and divide with her. Well, who the
+deuce wouldn't? That shows that his heart is in the right place. A man
+can go into the smoking car and sit on the wood box, but a woman has got
+to sit down, at least that is the way I should explain it.
+
+“Boys, may the trips become shorter each year, and the visits to the dear
+ones at home be extended, so that in time you may be detailed to stay at
+home always, with an increase of salary or an interest in the business;
+and, I am sure, when the time comes you will be the happiest fellows
+that ever had thousand mile tickets punched, and when your time comes to
+attend the grand banquet above, and you appear before St. Peter at the
+gate, and begin to open up your samples, he will simply look at your
+business card and turn to the clerk and say, 'Give these boys all front
+rooms, and see that there is a fire escape and plenty of towels, and
+that the rooms are aired, and then step down to the box office and
+reserve them some seats for the sacred concert this evening. Pass right
+in now and get a check for your overshoes.'”
+
+
+
+
+ACCIDENTS AND INCIDENTS AT THEATRES.
+
+Sometimes our heart bleeds for actors and actresses, when we think what
+they have to go through with. The other night at Watertown, N. Y.,
+Miss Ada Gray was playing “Camille,” and in the dying scene, where she
+breathes her last, to slow music, an accident occurred which broke her
+all up. She was surrounded by sorrowing friends, who were trying to do
+everything to make it pleasant for her, when the bed on which she
+was dying,--an impromptu sort of a bed got up by the stage
+carpenter,--tipped partly over, and the dying woman rolled over on the
+stage, tipped over a wash-stand filled with tumblers and bottles of
+medicine, and raised a deuce of a row. It would have been all right, and
+she could have propped the bed up and proceeded with her dying, had not
+the actress got rattled.
+
+Most actresses get lost entirely when anything occurs that is not in
+the play, and Miss Gray was the scaredest female that ever lived. She
+thought it was a judgment on her for playing a dying character, and
+thought the whole theatre had been struck by lightning, and was going
+to fall down. To save herself was her first thought, so she grabbed her
+night-dress,--which was embroidered up and down the front, and had point
+lace on the yoke of the sleeves,--in both hands and started for the
+orchestra, the wildest corpse that ever lived.
+
+The leader of the orchestra caught her, but not being an undertaker he
+did not undertake to hold her, and she fell over the bass viol and
+run one foot through the snare drum, and grasping the fiddle for a
+life-preserver she jumped into the raging scenery-back of the stage
+which represented a sea.
+
+They had to pull her out with boat-hooks, and it was half an hour before
+she could be induced to go to bed again and proceed with her dying.
+
+Actresses are often annoyed at the remarks made by foolish fellows in
+the audience. A remark by a person in the audience always causes people
+to laugh, whether the speaker says anything smart or not.
+
+Recently, in the play of “Cinderella at School,” a girl came out with a
+sheet over her, as a ghost, to frighten a young fellow who was “mashed”
+ on her. He looked at the ghost for a moment, and kept on lighting his
+cigarette, when a galloot up in the gallery said, so everybody could
+hear it, “He don't scare worth a damn!” and the audience went fairly
+wild, while the pretty girl stood there and blushed as though her heart
+would break.
+
+Such things are wrong.
+
+Probably one of the meanest tricks that was ever, played was played on
+Mary Anderson. It will be remembered that in the play of “Ingomar,”
+ Parthenia and the barbarian have several love scenes, where they lop on
+each other and hug some--that is, not too much hugging, but just hugging
+enough. Ingomar wears a huge fur garment, made of lion's skin, or
+something. One day he noticed that the moths were getting into it, and
+he told his servant to see about the moths, and drive them out. The
+servant got some insect powder and blowed the hair of the garment full
+of it, and scrubbed the inside of it with benzine.
+
+Ingomar put it on just before he went on the stage, and thought it
+didn't smell just right, but he had no time to inquire into it. He had
+not got fairly in his position, before Parthenia came out on a hop,
+skip and jump, and threw herself all over him. She got one lung full
+of insect powder, and the other full of benzine, and as she said, “Wilt
+always love me, Ingomar?” she dropped her head over his shoulder, and
+said in an aside, “For the love of heaven, what have you been drinking?”
+ and then sneezed a couple times.
+
+Ingomar held her up the best he could, considering that his nose was
+full of insect powder, and he answered:
+
+“I wilt “: and then he said to her quietly:
+
+“Damfino what it is that smells so!”
+
+They went on with the play between sneezes, and when the curtain went
+down she told Ingomar to go out and shake himself, which he did.
+
+It was noticed in the next act that Ingomar had a linen duster on, and
+Mary snoze no more.
+
+There was another mean trick played on a comedian a short time ago. In
+one of the plays he comes into a room as a tramp, and asks for something
+to drink. There is nothing to drink, and he asks if he may drink the
+kerosene in the lamp, which is on the table unlighted. The lamp has been
+filled with beer, and when he is told that he can slake his thirst
+at the lamp, he unscrews the top, takes out the wick, and drinks the
+contents. Everybody laughs, and the idea is a good one.
+
+At Chicago, recently, some friend took out the beer and filled the lamp
+with a liquid of the same color, but the most sickish tasting stuff that
+ever was. The comedian drank about three swallows of the neatsfoot oil
+before he got onto the joke, and then he flew around like a dog that had
+been poisoned, and went off the stage saying something like “Noo Yoick.”
+
+He has agreed to kill the fellow that loaded that lamp for him.
+
+
+
+
+ALL ABOUT A SANDWICH.
+
+The time for getting to the Michigan Central depot at Chicago was so
+limited that no regularly prepared supper could be secured, and so it
+was necessary to take a sandwich at the central depot. There has been
+great improvement made in the sandwiches furnished in Chicago, in the
+last ten years. In 1870 it was customary to encase the sandwiches in
+pressed sole leather. The leather was prepared by a process only known
+to a Prussian, and the bread and ham were put in by hydraulic pressure,
+and the hole soldered up.
+
+About four years ago, the Prussian who had the secret said something
+unkind to a pitcher of a baseball club, and the pitcher took up one of
+the sandwiches and pitched it curved at the Prussian's eye. His funeral
+was quite largely attended, considering that he was a man who was
+retiring, and who made few acquaintances; but the secret of making the
+soles and uppers of railroad sandwiches died with him.
+
+It was about this time that corrugated iron shutters were invented, and
+that material was at once utilized to make lids for sandwiches, while
+the under jaw of the appetite-destroying substance was made of common
+building paper, the whole-varnished with neats foot oil, and kiln dried
+in a lime kiln.
+
+Our object in eating one of the sandwiches, was to transfer, if
+possible, the headache to the stomach, on the principle that the quack
+doctor cured a patient of paralysis by throwing him into fits, claiming
+that he was not much on paralysis, but he was hell on fits. The entrance
+of the piece of sandwich into the stomach--that is, the small pieces
+that we were able to blast off with the imperfect appliances at hand in
+the tool box of a wrecking car--was signaled by the worst rebellion
+that has been witnessed in this country since 1860. The stomach, liver,
+lungs, spleen and other patent insides got up an indignation meeting,
+with the stomach in the chair. In calling the meeting to order the
+stomach said unaccustumed as it was to public speaking, it felt as
+though the occasion demanded a protest, and that in no uncertain tone,
+against the habit the boss had of slinging anything into the stomach
+that came in his way, without stopping to consider the effect on the
+internals.
+
+The chair remarked that it had heretofore had a good many hard doses to
+take, notably, army bacon, and later some black bread that the boss had
+shoved in while hunting out in Minnesota in 1876, and again last year
+when a pan full of beans from Bill Wall's Wolf river boom boarding house
+was sent down without any introduction, the stomach said it had felt
+like throwing up the “sponge,” and drawing out of the game, but it had
+thought better of it, and had gone on trying to digest things till now.
+But this last outrage, this Chicago sandwich, was too much.
+
+“See here,” says the stomach, holding up a piece of the iron lid of the
+sandwich so the liver could see it, “what kind of a junk shop does he
+take this place for?”
+
+The liver got the floor and suggested that the stomach was making
+a terrible fuss about a little thing, and told the stomach it had
+evidently forgotten the good things that had been sent down from above
+in times gone by.
+
+“You seem to forget,” says the liver, becoming warmed up, “the banquets
+the boss never fails to attend, the nice dinners he sometimes gets at
+home, and the wild canvas-back duck he sends down when he goes to
+Lake Koshkonong, as well as the Palmer House dinners that occasionally
+surprise us. I move that the stomach be reprimanded for kicking and
+trying to get up a muss, and that this meeting adjourn and we all go
+about our business.”
+
+The stomach tried to get in a word edgewise, but it was of no use, and
+the thing was about to break up in a row, when we went to sleep in one
+of the elegant Michigan Central sleepers, and in the morning the stomach
+was coaxing for something more, and didn't seem to care what it was.
+
+No young man should ever take two girls to a picnic. We don't care how
+attractive the girls are, or how enterprising a boy 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 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.
+
+If we start the youth of the land out right in the first place, they
+will be 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, 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 will take this
+extra girl, and it always falls to this good natured young man. He says
+of course there is room for three in the buggy.
+
+Sometimes he thinks maybe 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 that the extra girl is
+afraid of horses, dare not drive, and really requires some holding to
+keep her nerves quiet. He tries to drive with one hand and console 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 gives more
+or less dissatisfaction the best way you can fix it.
+
+If we had a boy who 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 just entering the
+picnic of life than to impress upon them the importance of doing one
+thing at a time, and doing it well.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+A young couple from Green county stopped at a Janesville hotel on their
+wedding tour, and when they went to bed they were in a hurry and blew
+out the gas instead of turning it off. In the night a terrible smell was
+heard around the house, and suspicion naturally pointed to the bridal
+chamber. The door was pounded on but there was no response, and the
+people feared the young folks had gone to heaven, so the door was broken
+down. They had not gone to heaven, but they were both senseless, and
+were dragged out into the open air, with little ceremony and less
+clothes. They were brought out of the stupor, when they looked at each
+other in a reproachful manner, and as they pulled on their clothes they
+each acted as though if they had known the horrors of married life they
+would have remained single all their lives.
+
+
+
+
+GOODWILL AND COMPASSION.
+
+The Duchess of Marlborough, who has charge of the fund that is being
+distributed to certain portions of Ireland's suffering poor, has issued
+a circular pitching into Parnell and others for claiming that she is
+acting in the interest of the English landlords. She closes her circular
+as follows:
+
+There is nothing that strikes me with more admiration than the
+generosity of the British nation. I have innumerable letters, all
+expressing good will and compassion for the calamities which a series of
+bad seasons have brought to the west of Ireland.
+
+To the family that is suffering for the necessaries of life, that would
+look upon a large sized potato as a bonanza, there is nothing that
+is pleasanter than to read a letter from an Englishman expressing
+compassion. How it tones up the stomach to read of the good will that,
+by a large majority, occupies the heart of the Briton who writes the
+letter to the Duchess of Marlborough.
+
+You take two plates, and put on one of them the letters expressing good
+will and compassion, and on the other plate you put some of the food
+sent by Americans, and offer the two plates to an Irish mother whose
+famishing children are tugging at her scanty skirts, and let her take
+her choice. How her trembling hand would clutch the plate containing the
+letters of compassion. Eh? She wouldn't take that plate, do you say? She
+would take the plate with the good, honest, star-spangled food on it,
+eh? O, you are mistaken. There is so much sustenance and warmth in a
+letter of compassion, that the famine stricken person would no doubt
+take it and make soup of it.
+
+But if you think she wouldn't we won't argue the case. However, you
+will admit that the Irish are very queer, and if they went back on their
+English benefactors and took the rebellious American food, they would be
+guilty of treason, of course you will. We are not astonished that
+there is nothing that Strikes the Duchess with more admiration than the
+generosity of the British nation. It is the most remarkable thing we
+ever heard of.
+
+
+
+
+THE FEMALE BURGLAR.
+
+Every day we see that some new avenue has been opened to women, by
+which they can earn a livelihood. We see by the papers that a woman
+in Cleveland has been arrested as a burglar. We have no objections to
+female pickpockets, for if a man must have his pockets picked, it will
+be much more enjoyable to feel the delicate hand of a beautiful woman
+fluttering around his pockets than a rough male hand.
+
+Many a man who would object to having his pockets picked by a man,
+would be willing to lose ten or fifteen dollars just to have a female
+pickpocket go through him.
+
+There is a field open for women as confidence men. To have a female
+confidence game played on a man would leave less of a sting than to be
+bilked by a male. But, as burglars, the idea seems revolting. To think
+of women going about nights with a jimmy and a dark lantern, and opening
+doors, or windows, and sneaking about rooms, is degrading. If a male
+burglar gets in your house, and he is discovered, you can shoot him, if
+you get the drop on him, or kick him down stairs; but who wants to shoot
+a female burglar, or kick her over the banisters? It would be unnatural.
+You would almost rather let her go ahead and burgle, and let her go away
+with your money, than to shoot her.
+
+Besides, you could not hit her with a bullet from an ordinary pistol
+in a vital part. The heart and other vital organs are covered with
+bullet-proof corsets, liver and lung pads and porous plasters. You take
+a corset and tie it around a sack of flour, and try to fire a bullet
+through it, and you will find that the bullet will fall to the ground.
+Try to fire a ball through a bed quilt, and you will discover that the
+ball becomes wound and twisted in the cotton batting, from the rifling
+of the barrel of the pistol, and stops as it goes through.
+
+A liver pad is as good as boiler iron to protect the form, so you see
+there is no place to shoot a female burglar, except in the head and
+legs. No gentleman would want to shoot a beautiful woman in the face,
+and with a long dress on he might as well shut his eyes and shoot at a
+hop-yard, and expect to hit a pole, as to expect to hit a woman's leg.
+
+So it is seen plainly that a female burglar would be perfectly safe from
+a pistol shot.
+
+Then, again, the natural gallantry of a man would prevent his making
+much of a fuss if he found a female burglar in his house. If the average
+man--and most men are average men--should wake up in the night and see a
+woman burglar feeling in his pants, rifling the pockets, or rummaging
+in the drawers of the bureau, he would lay still and let her burgle, as
+long as she would keep still and not wake up his wife. Were it a male
+burglar, he would jump up, regardless of his nocturnal costume, and tell
+him to get out of there, but he would hesitate to get up before a female
+burglar. He would not feel like accosting the female burglar without an
+introduction. If he spoke to her familiarly, she would be justified in
+being indignant, and saying, “Sir, I do not remember that we have ever
+met before,” and very likely she would turn her back on him, and say she
+was insulted.
+
+It places a man of gallantry in a very embarrassing situation to have a
+female burglar rob his house because he would be no gentleman if he did
+not offer to see her safe home. No true gentleman would like to see a
+female burglar go home alone at three or four o'clock in the morning,
+and while he might feel the loss of his property, it would be courtesy
+for him to offer to see her home, and help carry the swag.
+
+If women become burglars, there is going to be more or less annoyance.
+
+
+
+
+THE GIRL THAT WAS HUGGED TO DEATH.
+
+We are sorry to see so many of the humorous papers find any fun in the
+incident of the girl at Keokuk who was hugged to death by her lover. He
+had proposed to her, in her father's parlor, and she had accepted him,
+and in a moment of ecstacy he hugged her to his breast, and she died at
+once. The young man was horror stricken, and called her parents. It is
+supposed that she died of heart disease. The case was very sad, indeed,
+and papers should not make fun of an occurrence that brings so much
+sadness.
+
+However, while this case is fresh in the minds of old and young, we will
+embrace the opportunity, and embrace it gently, for fear we will kill
+it, to again impress upon young people what we have so often advised,
+and that is to be unusually careful about how they hug girls. Many a
+young man hugs a girl almost to death, and he never knows how near he
+comes to being a murderer.
+
+Girls now-a-days are not what they used to be when you and I were young,
+Maggie. They cannot stand as much grief now as girls did twenty years
+ago. Somehow, they don't seem to be put up for hugging. If a man puts
+his arm around a seven-teen-year-old girl of the present day, and sort
+of closes in on the belt, he expects to hear something break. Many a
+humane man lets go before he has got a girl half hugged because the girl
+looks so frail that he is afraid he will break her in two.
+
+Of course there are exceptions to the frail girls, but the majority are
+too much like a bundle of asparagus. Some of the girls of the present
+day are robust, and seem to be offended if a person lets up on the
+hugging on their account, and it is said they hug back with a vigor
+which reminds a man of the days of long ago, but they are few and far
+between.
+
+Too much care cannot be exercised in putting arms around the young girls
+of to-day, and we would wish to impress this fact upon the minds of the
+young men who are just coming upon the stage of action. Of course, men
+along in years do not need advice. The boys are apt to put more force
+into the right arm than they are aware of, a hundred per cent, more than
+they would be apt to do in sawing wood, or in carrying up a scuttle of
+coal.
+
+They should bear in mind that girls are too valuable to be used in
+developing the muscles, as you would a gymnasium. You don't have to
+squeeze a girl till her liver is forced from its normal position, and
+she chokes and catches her breath, to show her that you love her. A
+gentle squeeze of the hand, the stealing of the arm around her waist
+when she is not looking, and the least pressure upon her belt is all
+that the law requires.
+
+She can tell by your face whether you love her, as you sit there in
+the twilight looking into the guiding star eyes, as well as though you
+grabbed her as you would a sack of wheat, and hung on like a dog to a
+root.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+Anna Dickinson is going upon the stage again and is to play male
+characters, such as “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” and “Claude Melnotte.” We have
+insisted for years that Anna Dickinson was a man, and we dare anybody to
+prove to the contrary.
+
+There is one way to settle this matter, and that is when she plays
+Hamlet. Let the stage manager put a large spider in the skull of Yorick,
+and when Hamlet takes up the skull and says, “Alas, poor Yorick, I was
+pretty solid with him,” let the spider crawl out of one of the eye holes
+onto Hamlet's hand, and proceed to walk up Miss Dickinson's sleeve.
+If Hamlet simply shakes the spider off, and goes on with the funeral,
+unconcerned, then Miss Dickinson is a man. But if Hamlet screams bloody
+murder, throws the skull at the grave digger, falls over into the grave,
+tears his shirt, jumps out of the grave and shakes his imaginary skirts,
+gathers them all up in his hands and begins to climb up the scenes like
+a Samantha cat chased by a dog, and gets on top of the first fly and
+raises Hamlet's back and spits, then Miss Dickinson is a woman. The
+country will watch eagerly for the result of the test, which we trust
+will be made at the Boston Theatre next week.
+
+
+
+
+OUR CHRISTIAN NEIGHBORS HAVE GONE.
+
+It pains us to announce that the Young Men's Christian Association,
+which has had rooms on two sides of our office for more than a year,
+has moved away. We do not know why they moved, as we have tried to do
+everything that it was possible to do for their comfort, and to cheer
+them in their lonely life. That their proximity to the _Sun_ office has
+been beneficial to them we are assured, and the closeness has not done
+us any hurt as we know of. Many times when something has happened that,
+had it happened in La Crosse, might have caused us to be semi-profane,
+instead of giving way to the fiery spirit within us, and whooping it up,
+we have thought of our neighbors who were truly good, and have turned
+the matter over to our business manager, who would do the subject
+justice or burst a flue.
+
+When the young Christians have given a sociable, we have always put on
+a resigned and pious expression and gone amongst them about the time
+the good bald-headed brother brought up the pail full of coffee, and the
+cheerful sister cut the cake.
+
+No one has been more punctual at these free feeds than we have, though
+we have often noticed that we never got a fair divide of the cake that
+was left, when they were dividing it up to carry home for the poor. We
+have been as little annoyed by our neighbors as we could have been by
+anybody that might have occupied the rooms.
+
+It is true that at times the singing of a church tune in there when we
+were writing a worldly editorial has caused us to get tangled, but the
+piety that we have smuggled into our readers through the church music
+will more than atone for the wrath we have felt at the discordant music,
+and we have hopes the good brothers will not be averse to saying a good
+word for us when they feel like it.
+
+When we lent the young Christians our sanctum as a reception room for
+the ladies when they gave the winter picnic to the dry goods clerks, we
+_did_ feel a little hurt at finding so many different kinds of hair pins
+on the carpet the next morning, and the different colors of long hair on
+our plush chairs and raw silk ottoman would have been a dead give away
+on any other occasion, but for this, even, we have forgiven the young
+Christians, though if we ever do so again they have got to agree to comb
+the lounge and the chairs before we shall ever occupy the rooms again.
+
+There is nothing that is so hard to explain as a long hair of another
+color, or hair pins and blue bows, and pieces of switch. They are gone,
+and we miss them. No more shall we hear the young Christian slip up on
+the golden stairs and roll down with his boot heel pointing heavenward,
+while the wail of a soul in anguish comes over the banisters, and the
+brother puts his hand on his pistol pocket and goes out the front door
+muttering a silent prayer, with blood in his eyes.
+
+No more will the young Christian faint by the wayside as he brings back
+our borrowed chairs and finds a bottle and six glasses on our center
+table, when he has been importuning us to deliver a temperance speech in
+his lecture room. Never again shall we witness the look of agony on the
+face of the good brother when we refuse to give five dollars towards
+helping discharged criminals to get a soft thing, while poor people who
+never committed a crime and have never been supported by the State are
+amongst us feeling the pangs of hunger. No more shall we be compelled
+to watch the hard looking citizens who frequent the reading room of the
+association for fear they will enter our office in the still watches of
+the night and sleep on the carpet with their boots on.
+
+They are all gone. They have gone across the beautiful river, and have
+camped near the _Christian Statesman_ office, where all is pure and good
+except the houses over on Second street, beyond the livery stable, where
+they never will be molested if they do not go there.
+
+Will they be treated any better in their new home than they have been
+with us? Will they have that confidence in their new neighbors that
+they have always seemed to have in us? Well, we hope they may be always
+happy, and continue to do good, and when they come to die and go to St.
+Peter's gate, if there is any back talk, and they have any trouble about
+getting in, the good old doorkeeper is hereby assured that we will vouch
+for the true goodness and self-sacrificing devotion of the Milwaukee
+Young Men's Christian association, and he is asked to pass them in and
+charge it up to the _Sun_.
+
+
+
+
+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 enterprising
+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 there 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.
+
+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
+his 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 the 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 Assemblyman, 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.
+
+
+
+
+YOUNG FOOLS WHO MARRY.
+
+An exchange has the following item which may seem all right, but it will
+get some young fellow's back broke yet:
+
+“An Illinois justice has decided that courting is a public necessity,
+and must not be interrupted; therefore, if a young man wanted to kiss a
+girl he might put her father out of the room first if he liked.”
+
+The publication of the above may cause some smart youth to do something
+he will regret. The lame, sickly-looking father of a girl may come into
+the parlor some night and find the warm-haired youth on the sofa with
+the girl, and when the old man speaks of it being time to stop such
+nonsense, the young man, with this judicial decision in his mind, will
+tell his prospective father-in-law to wipe off his vest and go to bed.
+
+The old man will spit on his hands and grasp the warm-haired young man
+by the county seat and tie him up in a double bow knot, and pin a scarf
+on him, and throw him out on the path to the gate, and then he will turn
+and slap the girl across where the dress is plaited, and she will go up
+stairs with her hand on her heart, as it were, and the old man will jump
+up and say “Whoop?”
+
+The young men of this country have got gall enough about visiting girls
+in the evening at their homes without filling their heads with any such
+ideas in regard to their legal rights. There are very few fathers who
+would quietly submit to being told to go away by a youth with a striped
+neck tie and pants too short at the bottom.
+
+These sparkers are looked upon by parents generally as a nuisance, and
+often they are right. Nine-tenths of the sparking is done by boys who
+haven't got their growth, and they look so green that it is laughable
+for old folks to look at them. They haven't generally got a second
+shirt, and they are no more qualified to get married than a steer is to
+preach. And yet marrying is about the first thing they think of.
+
+A green boy, without a dollar, present or prospective, sparking a girl
+regularly and talking of marrying is a spectacle for gods and men. He
+should be reasoned with, and if he will not quit it until he is able
+to support a wife, and to know who he loves, and the difference between
+love and passion, he should be quarantined or put in a convent erected
+on purpose for such cases.
+
+Nine-tenths of the unhappy marriages are the result of green human
+calves being allowed to run at large in the society pasture without any
+pokes on them. They marry and have children before they do moustaches;
+they are fathers of twins before they are proprietors of two pairs of
+pants, and the little girls they marry are old women before they are
+twenty years old. Occasionally one of these gosling marriages turns out
+all right, but it is a clear case of luck.
+
+If there was a law against young galoots sparking and marrying before
+they have all their teeth cut, we suppose the little cusses would evade
+it some way, but there ought to be a sentiment against it. It is time
+enough for these bantams to think of finding a pullet when they have
+raised money enough by their own work to buy a bundle of laths to build
+a hen house. But they see a girl who looks cunning, and they are afraid
+there is not going to be girls enough to go around, and they begin
+their work real spry; and before they are aware of the sanctity of the
+marriage relation, they are hitched for life, and before they own a
+cook-stove or a bedstead they have to get up in the night and go for a
+doctor, so frightened that they run themselves out of breath and abuse
+the doctor because he does not run too; and when the doctor gets there
+he finds that there is not enough linen in the house to wrap up a doll
+baby.
+
+It is about this time that a young man begins to realize that he has
+been a colossal fool, as he flies around to heat water and bring in the
+bath tub, and as he goes whooping after his mother or her mother, he
+turns pale around the gills, his hair turns red in a single night, and
+he calls high heaven to witness that if he lives till morning, which
+he has doubts about, he will turn over a new leaf and never get married
+again until he is older. And in the morning the green-looking “father”
+ is around before a drug store is open, with no collar on, his hair
+sticking every way, his eyes blood-shot and his frame nervous, waiting
+for the clerk to open the door so he can get some saffron to make tea
+of.
+
+Less than a year ago he thought he was the greatest man there was
+anywhere, but he sits there in the house that morning, with his wedding
+coat rusty and shiny, his pants frayed at the bottom and patched in the
+seat, and the nurse puts in his arm a little bundle of flannel with a
+baby hid in it, and he holds it as he would a banana, and as he looks at
+his girl wife on the bed, nearly dead from pain and exhaustion, and
+he thinks that there are not provisions enough in the house to feed a
+canary, a lump comes in his throat and he says to himself that if he
+had it to do over again he would leave that little girl at home with her
+mother; and he would, till he had six dollars to buy baby flannel and
+ten dollars to pay the doctor.
+
+
+
+
+LARGE MOUTHS ARE FASHIONABLE.
+
+The fashion papers, which are authority on the styles, claim that ladies
+with large mouths are all the fashion now, and that those whose mouths
+are small and rosebud-like are all out of style. It is singular the
+freaks that are taken by fashion. Years ago a red-headed girl, with a
+mouth like a slice cut out of a muskmelon, would have been laughed at,
+and now such a girl is worth going miles to see.
+
+It is easier to color the hair red, and be in fashion, than it is to
+enlarge the mouth, though a mouth that has any give to it can be helped
+by the constant application of a glove stretcher during the day, and by
+holding the cover to a tin blacking box while sleeping. What in the world
+the leaders of fashion wanted to declare large mouths the style for, the
+heavens only can tell.
+
+Take a pretty face and mortise about a third of it for mouth, and it
+seems to us as though it is a great waste of raw material. There is no
+use that a large mouth can be put to that a small mouth would not do
+better, unless it is used for a pigeon hole to file away old sets of
+false teeth. They can't, certainly, be any better for kissing.
+
+You all remember the traveling man who attended the church fair at
+Kalamazoo, where one of the sisters would give a kiss for ten cents.
+He went up and paid his ten cents, and was about to kiss her when he
+noticed that her mouth was one of those large, open face, cylinder
+escapement, to be continued mouths. It commenced at the chin and went
+about four chains and three links in a northwesterly direction, then
+around by her ear, across under the nose and back by the other ear to
+the place of beginning, and containing twelve acres, more or less.
+
+The traveling man said he was only a poor orphan, and had a family to
+support, and if he never came out alive it would be a great hardship
+upon those dependent upon him for support, and he asked her as a special
+favor that she take her hand and take a reef in one side of the mouth
+so it would be smaller. She consented, and puckered in a handful of what
+would have been cheek, had it not been mouth. He looked at her again and
+found that the mouth had become a very one-sided affair, and he said he
+had just one more favor to ask.
+
+He was not a man that was counted hard to suit when he was at home
+in Chicago, but he would always feel as though he had got his money's
+worth, and go away with pleasanter recollections of Kalamazoo, if she
+would kindly take her other hand and draw the other side of her mouth
+together, and he would be content to take his ten cents' worth out of
+what was left unemployed.
+
+This was too much, and she gave him a terrible look, and returned him
+his ten cents, saying, “Do you think, sir, because you are a Chicago
+drummer, that for ten cents you can take a kiss right out of the
+best part of it? Go! Get thee to a nunnery,” and he went and bought a
+lemonade with the money.
+
+We would not advise any lady whose mouth is small to worry about this
+new fashion, and try to enlarge the one nature has given her. Large
+mouths will have their run in a few brief months and will be much sought
+after by the followers of fashion, but in a short time the little ones
+that pout, and look cunning, will come to the front and the large ones
+will be for rent. The best kind of a mouth to have is a middling sized
+one, that has a dimple by its sides, which is always in style.
+
+
+
+
+LOOKING FOR A MOOLEY COW.
+
+It is painful to read the remarks made by some of the papers in regard
+to the wicked stories told about a minister named Atwater, up in Dunn
+county, who was walking in the woods with a young lady. Some editors
+would believe anything that was told of a minister, if they knew it was
+untrue.
+
+The truth of the matter seems to be that the elder called to visit a
+Miss Northrop, a member of his church, who taught school at Knapp. She
+seemed to have something on her mind, which she wanted to unfold to him,
+and as there were other people in the house where she boarded, it was
+suggested that they walk up a hill, into a piece of woods, where they
+could talk more freely.
+
+They started out, and a lot of saw mill hands saw them, and immediately
+concluded that something was wrong, and after the truly good people had
+got into the brush the men followed. How natural it is for bad men to
+think there is something wrong, where two persons of the opposite sex
+are congregated together. The elder and the schoolma'am went in the
+grubs and sat down on a log, and there she unfolded to him her tale of
+woe.
+
+It appears that she had violated one of the rules of the church by
+dancing, and she felt that she ought to confess, and did confess. She
+cried like a child, and seemed to be weak, and the elder put his arm
+around her to keep her from falling off the log. Everybody knows how
+easy it is to roll off a log, if they are not looking, and any man that
+wouldn't put his arm around a girl, to keep her from falling off a log,
+would be a fool whom it would be base flattery to call another.
+
+She continued to weep--even the girl admits that--and he put his hand up
+to her forehead and stroked her hair, and told her to be calm, and her
+head may have fallen upon his breast. The number of heads that wouldn't,
+under the circumstances, are mighty few. She was overcome with grief and
+he with pity, and he tried to show her that if she braced up and tried
+to lead a different life, and shook the dancing hall and the wicked
+people who would put their arms around her, she might yet be saved.
+
+One can imagine that he was displeased at her going into a giddy throng,
+to be hugged in plain sight, to the music of a band, and pointed out to
+her how much more beautiful it would be to go into the woods, on a log.
+
+He had, it is alleged, got through soothing her, and she was about to
+wipe her nose on her handkerchief, and he was about to remove his arm
+from about her waist, when those wicked and perverse men from the saw
+mill came whooping into the thicket where they sat, looking for a mooley
+cow with one horn broke.
+
+Now, the elder and the girl knew in a moment that they were not looking
+for a mooley cow, but that they were scoffers, and when they asked
+the elder if he had seen such an animal, he rose up with much dignity,
+buttoned up his coat, and in a pious manner said that he had not seen
+the cow. He did not upbraid them for breaking into the solitude of the
+sacred confessional, looking for a mooley cow, but seemed to act the
+perfect gentleman all the way through.
+
+Nothing had transpired that might not have transpired in a parlor, if
+there had not been so many people in the house, and yet these illiterate
+and ungodly saw mill hands went off and told a story that would make
+angels blush. It is possible that the elder did wrong in not offering
+to go with them and look for the mooley cow, but we should not chide
+him for that. He probably had not time to take up a collection of his
+thoughts, and no doubt after he thought it over he was sorry he did not
+offer his services to them as a herder of mooley cows, but it was then
+everlastingly too late.
+
+They had gone and told the old, old story, and nothing remained to be
+done but to call a church meeting, which was done, and the elder and the
+girl were acquitted of any wrong doing. This was right. If men are to
+be deposed from the ministry for sitting down on a log and consoling a
+female parishioner, what is to become of the world?
+
+We don't believe the elder had any wrong motive, or that a thought
+entered his head that might not have entered any man's head under the
+circumstances. And yet it was unfortunate, it is so confounded hard to
+explain what they walked a mile for to get into the woods where there
+was a log.
+
+
+
+
+THE HARMFUL HAMMOCK.
+
+Geo. W. Peck, of Peck's _Sun_, knows more about the harmful hammock,
+both by experience and observation, than any other man in America. His
+testimony runs as follows:
+
+A young couple who were sitting in a hammock at one of the watering
+places in this State were severely injured by tipping over backwards
+and striking on the cheek of a head waiter. There is something about
+a hammock that is indescribable, and there is no rule that can be made
+that will insure safety while sitting in one of the queer things. There
+are people who believe that a hammock understands what is going on, and
+occasionally indulges in a joke.
+
+It is certain that an old person with a lame back can swing in a hammock
+half the day and it will never kick up. Servant girls and children can
+get in a hammock as thick as three in a bed and there is no danger, but
+let a spoony young couple sit down in a hammock ever so carefully and it
+seems as though the confounded thing was alive, and had taken a contract
+to spill them out on the ground in all sorts of embarrassing shapes.
+What it is that causes the commotion will, perhaps, never be known,
+without an investigation by some middle aged person, and if the season
+was not so near over we would investigate the blasted thing ourself,
+in the interest of our young readers who are in the full blush of
+hammockhood.
+
+There can be nothing much more annoying to a young couple than to be
+sitting side by side or facing each other in a hammock, looking into
+each other's eyes, and allowing the love they dare not speak to show
+itself in those orbs, and just as they are feeling as though they
+couldn't live a minute unless they clasped each other to each other's
+heaving bosoms, or at least one heaving bosom and one boiled shirt, and
+then have the hammock turn bottom side up and land them on the back of
+their necks, on the ground, with legs pointed towards the crab apples on
+the trees to which the hammock is hitched, arms flinging wildly to pull
+down pantaloon legs, and hands convulsively clawing gravel and muslin
+and delaine, while blushes suffuse faces that but a moment before were
+a background for the picture of love's young dream, and a crowd of
+spectators on the hotel verandah laughing and saying, “Set 'em up
+again.” The hammock shakes itself and turns right side up for other
+victims, as though it knew what it had been doing, and enjoyed it.
+
+There are young men all over the land who have been through such
+experiences, and had to walk backwards all the way to the house, owing
+to fissure veins being discovered in the wearing apparel below the
+suspenders, while the number of girls that have been mortified by having
+to go to the house with their back hair in one hand, their skirts in
+the other, while six places between the polonaise and the ear-rings were
+aching like the toothache from contact with the gravel path, are legion,
+and we call upon the authorities to suppress the hammock as a nuisance.
+
+More matches have been broken up by hammocks than by all the Sunday
+schools in the world, and no girl who is bow-legged, or has an ankle
+like a rutabaga, should ever trust herself in a hammock, even though it
+is held by half a dozen friends, as the hammock will shy at a piece of
+paper as quick as a skittish horse, and in such a moment as ye think not
+you are on all fours, your head dizzy, and if there is a hole in your
+stocking as small as a Democrat's hope of election, it will look to
+outsiders as big as the gate to a fair ground. O, a hammock is worse
+than a bicycle.
+
+
+
+
+BOYS AND CIRCUSES.
+
+There is one thing the American people have got to learn, and that is to
+give scholars in schools a half holiday when there is a circus in town.
+We know that we are in advance of many of the prominent educators of the
+country when we advocate such a policy, but sooner or later the people
+whose duty it is to superintend schools will learn that we are right,
+and they will have to catch up with us or resign.
+
+In the first place, a boy is going to attend a circus, if there is one
+in town, and the question before teachers and superintendents should
+be, not how to prevent him from going to the circus, but how to keep
+his mind on his books the day before the circus and the day after.
+There have been several million boys made into liars by school officials
+attempting to prevent their going to circuses, and we contend that it is
+the duty of teachers to place as few temptations to lie as possible in
+the way of boys.
+
+If a boy knows that there will be no school on the afternoon of circus
+day, he will study like a whitehead all the forenoon, and learn twice as
+much as he will in all day if he can't go. If he knows that there is a
+conspiracy on foot between his parents and the teachers to keep him from
+the circus, he begins to think of some lie to get out of school. He will
+be sick, or run away, or something.
+
+He will get there, if possible. And after the first lie succeeds in
+getting him out of school, he is a liar from the word go. There is
+something, some sort of electricity that runs from a boy to a circus,
+and all the teachers in the world cannot break the connection. A circus
+is the boys' heaven.
+
+You may talk to him about the beautiful gates ajar, and the angel
+band in heaven that plays around the great white throne, and he can't
+understand it, but the least hint about the circus tent, with the flap
+pulled to one side to get in, and the band wagon, and the girls jumping
+through hoops, and the clown, and he is onto your racket at a jump.
+
+You may try to paralyze him by the story of Daniel in the den of lions,
+and how he was saved by his faith in a power above, and the boy's mind
+will revert to the circus, where a man in tights and spangles goes in
+and bosses the lions and tigers around, and he will wonder if Daniel had
+a rawhide, and backed out of the cage with his eye on the boss lion.
+
+At a certain age a circus can hold over heaven or anything else, in a
+boy's mind, and as long as the circus does not hurt him, why not shut
+up shop a half a day and let him go? If you keep him in school he won't
+learn anything, and he will go to the circus in the evening, and be up
+half the night seeing the canvas men tear down the tent and load up, and
+the next day he is all played out and not worth a continental. To some
+it would look foolish to dismiss school for a circus, but it will cement
+a friendship between teachers and scholars that nothing else could.
+
+Suppose, a day or two before a circus arrives, the teacher should say to
+the school: “Now I want you kids to go through your studies like a tramp
+through a boiled dinner, and when the circus comes we will close up this
+ranch and all go the circus, and if any of you can't raise the money to
+go, leave your names on my desk and I will see you inside the tent if I
+have to pawn my shirt.”
+
+Of course it is a male teacher we are supposing said this. Well, don't
+you suppose those boys and girls would study? They would fairly whoop it
+up. And then suppose the teacher found forty boys that hadn't any money
+to go, and he had no school funds to be used for such a purpose.
+
+How long would it take him to collect the money by going around among
+business men who had been boys themselves? He would go into a store and
+say he was trying to raise money to take some of the poor children to
+the circus, and a dozen hands would go down into a dozen pockets in two
+jerks of a continued story, and they would all chip in.
+
+O, we are too smart. We are trying to fire education into boys with a
+shotgun, when we ought to get it into them inside of sugar coated pills.
+Let us turn over a new leaf now, and show these boys that we have got
+souls in us, and that we want them to have a good time if we don't lay
+up a cent.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+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 towards 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 slickery 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 sleeping car companies are discussing the idea advanced by the
+_Sun_, of placing safes in the cars, or iron drawers with locks, into
+which passengers can place their watches and money. We trust the iron
+drawers will be adopted, as the flannel drawers now used are not safe by
+any means. It is true they are sometimes tied with a string in the small
+of the back, but the combination is not difficult for even a stranger
+to unlock, unless it is tied in a hard knot. Give us iron drawers in a
+sleeping car by all means. To be sure they will be cold; but everything
+is cold in a sleeping car except the colored porter.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+Several proprietors of eastern resorts have announced that only adults
+will be entertained, and that no children will be admitted as guests on
+any terms. At first we would be inclined to say that a hotel proprietor
+who would make such a distinction could have no soul, but when we
+reflect that the proprietor is catering to the pleasure of a majority of
+his guests, then we conclude that the guests are devoid of souls.
+
+What kind of a place would a summer resort be without happy children? It
+would be a hospital for decayed roues, very old maids, women who
+hated children, smart Alecks who were mashers, dead beats and sour
+curmudgeons. The day would be put in in gossiping, exercising old flirts
+with stiff joints, drinking at somebody's expense, and fishing for rich
+husbands with graveyard coughs, and angling for women who wanted to be
+caught and didn't care a continental who caught them.
+
+The atmosphere about such a place would be a blizzard of heat and cold,
+filled with fine sand, and would make a person with a heart, who loved
+children, think he or she was in hell looking for an artesian well.
+
+A hotel proprietor who will thus insult the better part of the human
+race, should be ignored entirely by all who love children, and he should
+be compelled to stand on his deserted verandah all the season and see
+his rival across the way, who entertains children, surrounded by
+the richest and best guests, and the soulless creature, and the few
+soulless, dyspeptic boarders that he has, should be obliged to listen
+to the laughter of thousands of happy children running races and playing
+tag up and down the lawn of the man who has a soul.
+
+No one who would patronize a summer hotel that refuses little children
+a breath of God's fresh air should enjoy a moment's pleasure. Mosquitoes
+should bore them, and country dogs should bark all night and keep them
+awake. Be they male or female resorters, we pray for ants to crawl up
+them, for bugs and worms to go down them, for snakes to frighten them
+out of their boots or gaiters, for country cows to run them out of
+pastures, and fleas to get inside their night gowns and practice the
+lancers all night. May their food disagree with them, their clothes
+fail to come back from the laundry, and their bandoline lose its staying
+qualities.
+
+And may those at the house where children are welcome have health and
+happiness, and may they get to heaven, eventually, with the children,
+and while on the way up there may they throw a bundle of prepared
+kindling wood into the pit below where the child haters are sighing for
+zinc ulsters.
+
+
+
+
+THE KIND OF A DOCTOR TO HAVE.
+
+A dispatch from Long Branch announces that “Dr. Bliss goes to New York
+for a few hours today.” That is encouraging. If the doctors had kept
+away from the President more he would have been better. He has had from
+one to six doctors in sight, night and day, for over ten weeks. Take
+a man here at home that is sick, and let a doctor go and stay with him
+night and day, and how long do you suppose the man would live?
+
+What a sick man wants is to have a doctor go around practicing on other
+people, and come in once or twice a day, blow off a little steam, slap
+the patient on the leg and say, “Well, boss, how's your liver?” A sick
+man wants to have a doctor forget to come some time when he is expected,
+and get nervous about it, instead of getting nervous because the
+pill-bags is there all the time, smelling of everything.
+
+Let a doctor that is due at the bedside at 4 o'clock, say, stay away
+till 6, and then come in and tell about being down on the South Side
+to see about somebody's having a sick baby, or to sew up a man that has
+been to a circus, and the cross patient that has been waiting for the
+doctor till he got mad, is better at once. It cheers him to know that
+somebody else has a baby or had a gash cut in him in a fight, and
+changes his mind about swearing at the doctor, and feels better.
+
+Why, some of our best doctors never think of curing a man until they get
+him mad a few times. It braces a man up to get mad and think, “Now that
+confounded old pill-bags has forgotten all about me, and I'll bet he is
+in a saloon somewhere shaking the dice for the drinks.” A sick man gains
+strength, actually, lying in bed and thinking how he would like to kick
+the stuffin' out of a doctor.
+
+A doctor who has only one patient is a damage to the patient, and
+Garfield has suffered more by having those doctors around when he ought
+to have been left alone till he yearned for them, than anybody imagines.
+Why, the feeling of a man's pulse for half an hour, and timing it as you
+would a trotting horse, is enough to make a well man sick. What a doctor
+wants to do is to feel of a man's pulse about one second, and then throw
+the patient's hand down and say: “O, you are all right. We will have you
+entered in a walking match next week.”
+
+He wants to say something of this kind if the man is dying. A doctor has
+got to be a good deal of a liar, to succeed. We do not mean to say Bliss
+is not a liar, but somehow he does not seem to display judgment. He is
+too much of a stayer. Bliss is too frequent.
+
+
+
+
+THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY ABE TALKING ABOUT.
+
+A celebrated writer on the state of the country, has an article in a
+magazine, in which occurs the following paragraph:
+
+“The defects of the New England girl may be done away with by giving
+less prominence to the purely intellectual or purely practical side of
+her education.”
+
+In the first place, we do not admit that there are any defects in the
+Boston girl, but if there _are_ defects, as is alleged by the writer
+above, and by other scientific persons, we do not see how giving less
+prominence to her intellectuality is going to do away with them. For
+instance, there is a defect in the girl whereby she has a shin on both
+sides of her lower limb, or an indentation where there should be the
+customary calf--we say calf advisedly, because it _is_ a calf, and no
+person need be ashamed of it, even if it _is_ terrible slim--we don't
+see how that defect can be done away with by giving less prominence to
+the purely practical side of her education. It does not stand to reason.
+Sawdust, or bran would be worth two of it.
+
+Or, again, suppose the New England girl has no hips to speak of, or her
+stomach is caved in where there should be a fullness, is the giving of
+less prominence to the purely intellectual side of her education going
+to do away with these defects, or fill up the waste places and make them
+glad? Not much! A sack of canary seed, or a rubber air cushion, or a
+bale of cotton, beats the Boston idea all hollow, and we will leave it
+to anybody that knows anything.
+
+Now, as to hair. Suppose the Boston girl has no more natural hair than
+one of these Mexican dogs, is education going to raise a crop of hair?
+Not by any means--she has got to buy it.
+
+No, you Boston magazine critters can theoretically take a plain,
+unvarnished New England girl with these defects, and give all the
+prominence you want to to the practical side of her education, and you
+may imagine you can do away with these defects and make her pass muster
+in a crowd, but when you get all through she will be homely as a stone
+fence, and some western girl, with no defects at all, just a natural
+born jolly girl, with not too much education and intellectuality, will
+come along there, and all Boston will go crazy after her.
+
+You fellows don't seem to know what you are talking about. Well,
+we don't know what we are talking about either, but we had to write
+something to fill up with, and girls are the easiest things in the world
+to write about.
+
+
+
+
+A KANSAS CYCLONE.
+
+The little town of Clyde, Kansas, is mighty full of vinegar for a place
+of its size. The principal amusement the boys have is to scare the
+daylights out of visitors from the States by telling big stories about
+cyclones.
+
+There are two young fellows in business there named Will May and Charley
+Armstrong. They have a store where they buy butter, and eggs, and
+things, and pack them for the Eastern market. Last June, Uncle
+Armstrong, father of Charley, and a young fellow named Charley Farmer,
+were out there visiting. The hosts entertained the guests to the most
+hair-standing stories about cyclones, until they were so nervous they
+couldn't sleep at night.
+
+One night the guests had retired, and the zephyr was pretty loud. Will
+and Charley got into the room adjoining that occupied by the guests, and
+began to talk about funnel-shaped clouds, trees torn up by the roots,
+horses flying through the air, and wagons being taken up bodily and
+carried away--talking so the guests could hear them. Then they prayed
+for strength to pull them through the fearful ordeal; and, pretending
+that a cyclone was upon them, they started down stairs head over
+appetite, to get into the refrigerator, in the cellar, for safety,
+yelling to the guests to fly for their lives.
+
+Uncle Armstrong is getting pretty well along in years, but he got down
+to the cellar about ten stairs ahead of young Farmer, and asked to be
+allowed to get into the refrigerator first. It seemed a little cruel
+to the boys to let the guests get in there with nothing on but their
+undershirts, but they were going to have some fun, so they put them in
+among the cakes of ice, and Uncle Armstrong sat down on the zinc floor
+and allowed that if his life was spared till morning, he would never set
+foot in Kansas again.
+
+Young Farmer sat on a firkin of butter, and leaned against the zinc
+lined side of the refrigerator, and tried to pray, but he had forgotten
+the combination; and couldn't make a first payment.
+
+Will and Charley went up stairs ostensibly to lock the safe, but really
+to go on with the programme. The first thing they did was to fire off
+a shotgun, and roll a keg of shingle-nails down the cellar stairs, and
+yell to the guests in the refrigerator to look out for God's sake, as
+the house was struck by lightning.
+
+Young Farmer got down off the firkin, and got on his knees, and tried to
+repeat some Sunday school lesson, but all he could think of was, “Evil
+communications corrupt two in the bush.” The old gentleman, who was
+struck in the small of the back by a piece of ice that fell off some
+butter, thought he was struck by lightning; so he began to sing, “A
+charge to keep I have.”
+
+The boys up stairs got a bag of buckshot, and opened it, and every
+little while would throw a handful onto the outside cellar door, right
+above the heads of the freezing occupants of the refrigerator, at the
+same time pounding a piece of sheet iron to make thunder. They kept this
+up for an hour, and then got a barrel and filled it with broken glass
+and pieces of crockery, and they would roll it across the floor above,
+while one would take an ax and pound on some bar iron that was leaning
+against the wall, making a most hideous noise.
+
+Charley Farmer said he supposed he was as well prepared to die as he
+ever would be, but he said he would give ten dollars if he had his pants
+down there.
+
+Uncle Armstrong asked him what difference it made whether he had his
+pants on or not, and Charley said he didn't want to be ushered into
+the New Jerusalem with all his sins on his head, before the angels, and
+nothing on but a knit undershirt.
+
+They were discussing this question when they gave vent to a dying groan,
+closed their eyes, and then all was still.
+
+The prisoners thought it was all over, and they didn't stir for about
+ten minutes. They thought the house had blown away, and left them alive,
+and they were inclined to be thankful even for that; when Charley and
+Will came down and opened the refrigerator, and told them the storm
+was over, but that it was the almightiest cyclone that ever passed over
+Kansas.
+
+
+
+
+HOW JEFF DAVIS WAS CAPTURED.
+
+The accounts of the capture of Jeff Davis, in his wife's clothes, which
+have been published ever since the war, have caused many to laugh,
+and has surrounded the last days of the confederacy with a halo of
+ludicrousness that has caused much hard feeling between Mr. Davis and
+the American people. His friends would have been much better pleased if
+he had bared his breast to the cavalryman who captured him, and been run
+through with a sabre, and died with some proud last words on his lips,
+such as, “Who will care for mother now,” or “The cause is lost. Send out
+a search warrant to find it.”
+
+It was a terribly ridiculous ending to a great struggle, the way we have
+been in the habit of reading the story, but now we have a new light on
+the subject. Mr. Davis has written a book on the war, and in it he gives
+the following particulars of his capture and the bravery he displayed.
+Instead of sneaking off in his wife's petticoat, after a pail of
+spring water, Mr. Davis describes that escape as being almost a bloody
+encounter. He says:
+
+“I had gone perhaps fifteen or twenty yards when a trooper galloped up
+and ordered me to halt and surrender, to which I gave a defiant answer,
+and, dropping the shawl and raglan from my shoulders, advanced toward
+him. He leveled his carbine at me, but I expected if he fired he would
+miss me, and my intention was, in that event, to put my hand under
+his foot, tumble him off on the other side, spring into his saddle and
+attempt to escape. My wife, who had been watching, when she saw the
+soldier aim his carbine at me, ran forward and threw her arms around
+me. Success depended on instantaneous action, and, recognizing that the
+opportunity had been lost, I turned back, and, the morning being damp
+and chilly, passed on to a fire beyond the tent.”
+
+This puts an entirely different face on the affair, and instead of
+being a childish coward, he represents himself to have been an arch
+conspirator, who disguised himself as a female to get a good chance to
+throw a boy off his horse and steal the horse. We can only admire the
+calm determination of the man, as he stood there waiting for the boy to
+shoot, so he could rush up, unarmed, put his hand under the soldier's
+foot, tip him off the horse, get on himself, without receipting to the
+government for the horse, and skedaddle.
+
+It is not necessary to inquire what the boy would have been doing all
+the time Jeff was pulling him off the horse. We all know how easy it is
+for an unarmed old man to spill a healthy soldier off a horse. We can
+readily see that the soldier could not have whacked the old fellow over
+the head with the empty carbine, or drawn his sabre and run him through,
+or given him a few shots out of a revolver.
+
+Jeff had, no doubt, arranged in his own mind to chloroform the bold
+Michigan cavalryman, but his wife broke it all up by throwing her arms
+around him at an inopportune moment, thus pinioning the President of the
+Confederacy so he could not whip the Union army. And so, like Adam, Jeff
+lays the whole business to the woman. What would we do without women to
+lay everything to?
+
+And while Jeff must ever doubt the judgment of his wife in breaking up
+his plans at that trying moment, when so much was at stake, how that
+soldier, whose life was saved by her act, must revere her, memory!
+Had the woman not held Jeff the soldier must have been pitched off his
+horse, and striking on his head, he must have been killed.
+
+Mr. Davis does not say so, but we have no doubt his plan was to have the
+soldier strike on his head on a projecting root or stone, so he would be
+killed. If there should be another war, we should never join the cavalry
+branch of the service unless there was an understanding that no old men,
+armed with petticoats and tin water pails, should be allowed to charge
+on cavalrymen and throw them off their horses.
+
+It is said that during the late war no man ever saw a dead cavalryman,
+but if the tactics of Mr. Davis had been adopted early in the war, the
+mortality must have been fearful, and perhaps the result of the war
+would have been different. We cannot be too thankful that Jeff didn't
+think of that way of demoralizing cavalry before.
+
+
+
+
+THOSE BOLD, BAD DRUMMERS.
+
+About seventy-five traveling men were snowed in at Green Bay during a
+late blockade, and they were pretty lively around the hotels, having
+quiet fun Friday and Saturday, and passing away the time the best they
+could, some playing seven up, others playing billiards, and others
+looking on. Some of the truly good people in town thought the boys were
+pretty tough, and they wore long faces and prayed for the blockade to
+raise so the spruce looking chaps could go away.
+
+The boys noticed that occasionally a lantern-jawed fellow would look
+pious at them, as though afraid he would be contaminated, so Sunday
+morning they decided to go to church in a body. Seventy-five of them
+slicked up and marched to the Rev. Dr. Morgan's church, where the
+reverend gentleman was going to deliver a sermon on temperance. No
+minister ever had a more attentive audience, or a more intelligent one,
+and when the collection plate was passed every last one of the travelers
+chipped in a silver dollar.
+
+When the sexton had received the first ten dollars the perspiration
+stood out on his forehead as though he had been caught in something. It
+was getting heavy, something that never occurred before in the history
+of church collections at the Bay. As he passed by the boys, and dollar
+after dollar was added to his burden, he felt like he was at a picnic,
+and when twenty-five dollars had accumulated on the plate he had to hold
+it with both hands, and finally the plate was full, and he had to go and
+empty it on the table in front of the pulpit, though he was careful to
+remember where he left off, so he wouldn't go twice to the same drummer.
+
+As he poured the shekels out on the table, as still as he could, every
+person in the audience almost raised up to look at the pile, and there
+was a smile on every face, and every eye turned to the part of the
+church where sat the seventy-five solemn looking traveling men, who
+never smole a smile. The sexton looked up to the minister, who was
+picking out a hymn, as much as to say, “Boss, we have struck it rich,
+and I am going back to work the lead some more.” The minister looked
+at the boys, and then at the sexton as though saying, “Verily, I would
+rather preach to seventy-five Milwaukee and Chicago drummers than to own
+a brewery. Go, thou, and reap some more trade dollars in my vineyard.”
+
+The sexton went back and commenced where he left off. He had his
+misgivings, thinking maybe some of the boys would glide out in his
+absence, or think better of the affair and only put in nickels on
+the second heat, but the first man the sexton held out the platter
+to planked down his dollar, and all the boys followed suit, not a man
+“passed” or “ra nigged,” and when the last drummer had been interviewed
+the sexton carried the biggest load of silver back to the table that he
+ever saw.
+
+Some of the silver dollars rolled off on the floor, and he had to put
+some in his coat pockets, but he got them all, and looked around at the
+congregation with a smile and wiped the perspiration off his forehead
+with a bandanna handkerchief and winked, as much as to say, “The first
+man that speaks disrespectfully of a traveling man in my presence will
+get thumped, and don't you forget it.”
+
+The minister rose up in the pulpit, looked at the wealth on the table,
+and read the hymn, “A charge to keep I have,” and the congregation
+joined, the travelers swelling the glad anthem as though they belonged
+to a Pinafore chorus. They all bowed their heads while the minister,
+with one eye on the dollars, pronounced the benediction, and the
+services were over.
+
+The traveling men filed out through the smiles of the ladies and went to
+the hotel, while half the congregation went forward to the anxious seat,
+to “view the remains.” It is safe to say that it will be unsafe, in the
+future, to speak disparagingly of traveling men in Green Bay, as long
+as the memory of that blockade Sunday remains green with the good people
+there.
+
+
+
+
+ANGELS OR EAGLES.
+
+We are told that in the revision of the Bible the passage, “And I
+beheld an angel flying through the midst of heaven,” has been changed to
+“eagle,” and that all allusions to angels have been changed to “eagles.”
+ This knocks the everlasting spots out of the angel business, and the
+poetry of wanting to be an angel, “and with the angels stand,” has
+become the veriest prose.
+
+We have never had any particular desire to stand with angels, not this
+year, but there was a certain beauty in the idea that we would all be
+angels when we got through whooping it up down here and went to heaven.
+
+Particularly was this the case with children and women, and old persons,
+and to have the angel business wiped out by a lot of white chokered
+revisers is too much. There are many of us that would never make very
+attractive angels, unless we were altered over a good deal, and made
+smaller.
+
+Some of us, to pass current among angels, would have to wear wigs. How
+would a male bald-headed angel, with a red nose, and one eye gone, look
+flying a match through the blue ethereal space with a trim built girl
+angel? The other angels would just sit around on the ground, picking pin
+feathers out of their wings, and laugh so a fellow would want to go off
+somewhere and get behind a tree and condemn his luck.
+
+There are few men who would be improved by fastening wings on their
+shoulder blades, and we never believed they could make the thing work,
+but the preachers have kept pounding it into us until we all got an idea
+there would be some process that could transform us into angels that
+would pass in a crowd.
+
+Now, you take Long John Wentworth, of Chicago, a man seven feet high,
+and weighing four hundred pounds. What kind of an angel would he make?
+They would have to put wings on him as big as a side show tent, or he
+never could make any headway. Just imagine John circling around over
+the New Jerusalem, until he saw a twenty dollar gold piece loose in the
+pavement of the golden streets. He would cut loose and go down there so
+quick it would break him all up.
+
+And then suppose angel Storey, of the _Times_, and angel Medill, of the
+_Tribune_, should have got their eyes on that loose gold piece, and
+got there about the same time before angel John arrived, and should be
+quarreling over it? John would knock Storey over onto a hydrant with one
+wing, and mash angel Medill in the gutter with the other, and take the
+gold piece in his toes and fly off to where the choir was singing, and
+break them all up singing, “You'll never miss the water till the well
+runs dry.”
+
+We have never taken a great deal of stock in the angel doctrine, because
+we knew pretty well what kind of material they would have to be made of,
+but we had rather be an angel than an eagle. Who the deuce wants to
+die and be an eagle, like “Old Abe,” and eat rats? In a heaven full of
+eagles there would be the worst clawing that ever was, and the air would
+be full of feathers. Eagles won't do, and the revisers ought to have
+known it.
+
+If we have got to be anything let us insist on being angels, via the
+Bible, and then we can have some fun. With big flocks of angels, and
+good weather, and nothing to do but to sing praises and browse around to
+pass away the time, and no rent to pay, and no bills of any kind to
+keep track of, it does seem as though some of us could think of some
+tableaux, or picnic, or something to have a good time, but let us strike
+on being eagles, revisers or no revisers.
+
+
+
+
+AN ACCIDENT ALL ABOUND.
+
+A most ridiculous scene occurred at a church in Newcastle, Penn.,
+one Sunday, a short time ago. A policeman was passing the church as a
+gentleman came out. The man jokingly accosted the policeman and said he
+was wanted inside meaning that he would be glad to have him turn from
+the error of his ways, and seek the truth and enjoy a peace that passeth
+all understanding. The stupid policeman thought there was some trouble
+in the church, so he went in.
+
+The sexton, seeing a policeman, was anxious to give him a favorable
+seat, so he said, “Come right in here,” and he took him into a pew and
+waved his hand as much as to say, “Help yourself.” There was another
+man in the pew, a deacon with a sinister expression, as the policeman
+thought, and he supposed that was the man they wanted arrested, so he
+tapped the deacon on the arm and told him to go into the aisle. The
+deacon struggled, thinking the policeman was crazy, and tried to get
+away, but he was dragged along. Many of the congregation thought that
+the deacon had been doing something wrong, and some of them got behind
+the deacon and helped the officer fire him out.
+
+Arriving at the lock-up, the policeman saw the man who told him he
+was wanted in the church and asked him what the charge was against the
+deacon, and he didn't know, so the sexton was appealed to, and he didn't
+know, and finally the prisoner was asked what it was all about, and he
+didn't know.
+
+The policeman was asked what he arrested the man for, and he didn't
+know, and after awhile the matter was explained, and the policeman, who
+had to arrest somebody, took the man into custody who told him he was
+wanted in the church, and he was fined five dollars and costs.
+
+He says he will never try to convert a policeman again, and the
+policeman says he will never go into a church again if they get to
+knocking each other down with hymn books.
+
+
+
+
+PRIZE FIGHTING AND MORMONISM.
+
+The trouble that is usually experienced by prize fighters in finding a
+place where they can fight unmolested must have been apparent to all,
+and _The Sun_ would suggest a way out of the difficulty.
+
+Let the government set apart a portion of the public domain, near some
+military post, and enact a law that prize fighting shall be no more
+unlawful than polygamy, or stealing from the government. If prize
+fighters can have the same immunity from arrest and punishment that
+polygamists and defaulters have, it is all they ask, and it seems not
+unreasonable to ask it.
+
+Certainly a prize fighter in whipping a friend to raise money to support
+one wife and one set of children, when the other fellow is willing to
+take the chances of being whipped, is not as bad as a praying old cuss
+who marries from twenty to forty feeble minded females and raises a
+flock of narrow headed children to turn loose after a while, with not
+much more brain than goslings.
+
+If two men want to go out and enjoy “life, liberty and the pursuit of
+happiness,” by mauling each others faces, why should they be pulled, and
+let an official who steals half a million dollars from the government,
+give a New Year's reception? The thing does not look right to a man who
+believes that this is a free country, and that every man is endowed with
+certain inalienable rights, among which is the right to pay his debts.
+
+Another thing, the government, if it decided to set apart certain ground
+for prize fights, might create the office of “referee,” and appoint
+some honest, square man, who applied for a consulship and there was no
+vacancy, to the position, with a good salary. What prize fighters
+need is a referee that can be depended on, and it would be no worse to
+appoint a government referee than it would to give breech loading arms
+and ammunition to Indians to go on the war-path with.
+
+Prize fighting does not do any harm. If one of the principals is
+killed, which does not often occur, the government is so much ahead. The
+government would furnish the poison if Mormons would kill themselves.
+Why not furnish prize fighters an opportunity to climb the golden
+stairs? The fact of it is, as a people we oppose prize fighting because
+it is “brutal,” and we go to a wrestling match where men hurt themselves
+twice as much as they would if they stood up and knocked each other
+down. We cry out against prize fights, and yet a majority of the male
+population would walk ten miles to see a prize fight when they wouldn't
+ride a mile to attend church.
+
+We wish men would not fight, but if they want to they should either be
+allowed to, or else all other kinds of foolishness should be suppressed.
+If every respectable business man in this country could box as well as
+Sullivan there would not be as much crime as there is to-day. Suppose
+all the men that have been robbed in the past year by cowardly sand
+baggers, could have “put up their hands,” and knocked the robbers
+into the middle of next week, wouldn't there be fewer headaches and
+heartaches, fewer widows mourning their murdered husbands, and fewer
+orphans?
+
+It is against the law to carry weapons, and yet if a man opens a
+boxing-school to teach men to defend themselves, and fit them so they
+can knock the hind sights off a robber, he is frowned upon. We want to
+see the time when every young man has got muscle, and knows how to use
+it, and then there will be fewer outrages. If a respectable citizen has
+a daughter that is the pride of his heart, he had rather she would go to
+a theatre or a party with a man who can protect her with his strong
+arm than with an effeminate curiosity that has his brain parted in the
+middle, and who would be afraid to meet a dwarf in the dark.
+
+We advise every boy who reads _The Sun_ to throw away the revolver he
+has bought to carry in his pistol pocket, or sell it to some coward, and
+use the money to hire somebody to teach him to box, and to strike a
+blow that will make any person sick to his stomach who insults the boy's
+sister. Just depend your muscle to get through the world. If the boy's
+people are truly good and want him to go to Sunday-school he should do
+it, and learn all that is good, but he should want a little exercise
+with his hands between meals, and learn the efficacy of two fists, for
+sometimes they come handy.
+
+We have heard of cases in prayer meetings where deacons got to fighting,
+even in this State, and a fellow that could use his fists best stood up
+the longest, though a chair was used by the opponent. We know ministers
+in Wisconsin who are good boxers, and while they would not teach boxing
+from the pulpit, they would not object to see every boy know how. Since
+the tramps have been knocking people down in Indianapolis, we have been
+anxious to hear that one of them has tackled our old friend, Rev. Myron
+Reed; as we know that tramp would go to the hospital dead sure. Boys,
+learn to box.
+
+
+
+
+MISDEAL IN A SLEEPING CAR.
+
+There is one thing about sleeping cars that should be changed, and that
+is the number of the berth should be on the curtain, so when a man gets
+up in the night to go out to the back end of the car and look out into
+the night to see if the stars are shining, and he gets through seeing
+if the stars are shining, and goes back, he will not get into the wrong
+berth.
+
+Since the other night we have not wondered that on a similar occasion,
+at the dead hour of night, as it is reported, the truly good Mr.
+Beecher, who left his berth to see the porter, and ask him about how
+long it would be before they got there, returned to what he supposed
+was his own berth, and sat down on the side of it to remove his
+trouserloons, and by a scream was notified that he was in the wrong
+pew. We attach no blame to Mr. Beecher, and would defend him to the last
+breath, because to a man whose mind is occupied with great thoughts, the
+berths all look alike. Neither do we blame Miss Anthony for screaming.
+She could not know in the imperfect light that was vouchsafed her in a
+sleeping car, that it was a mistake. She had no time to argue; it was
+a case where immediate decision was necessary, and she did right to
+scream--she could not do otherwise. But when vile men tell us, as they
+draw down their eyelids and wink, that it was “a mistake the way the
+woman kept tavern in Michigan,” they do an injustice to a noble preacher
+who has been lied about, and who has better judgment than to do so
+knowingly.
+
+So we say that anybody is liable to err; but if anybody had told us,
+when that woman from Pere Marquette, with a hare lip, and a foot like
+a fiddle box, got into the berth next to ours, that in the dead hour of
+night we should be sitting down on the selvage of her berth, we should
+have killed him.
+
+We are more than ever struck by the old adage that the ways of
+Providence are inscrutable, and past finding the right berth. We had
+gone out to the back part of the car, and stood in our stocking feet on
+the cold zinc floor for a couple or three minutes, looking out upon
+the beautiful Michigan landscape and waterscape, as the train passed
+Michigan City, and had asked the porter if there was any bar on the
+train, and had returned up the aisle to find our berth.
+
+Pulling aside the curtains we sat down, and were about to throw our hind
+leg up into the sheets, when a cold, hard hand, calloused like a horn
+spoon, grabbed hold of the small of our back, and two piercing eyes shot
+sharp glances at our human frame.
+
+One look was enough to show that we had opened the wrong curtains. Every
+second we expected that a female scream would split the air wide
+open, that the passengers would tumble out of the berths, and that the
+conductor would have us arrested for coalition with intent to deceive.
+It seemed years that we sat there with that cold hand grasping the
+situation, and we would have given half our fortune to have been in the
+bunk just one remove towards Canada.
+
+All things have an end, and just as we were imagining that the woman
+with the hare lip was feeling around with her disengaged hand to draw
+from its concealment in her corset, a carving knife, with which to cut
+a couple of slices off our liver, a voice said, “Well, what in Kalamazoo
+are you doing in this berth, anyway?”
+
+The porter came along with a lantern, and we looked at the woman with a
+hare lip and a bass voice, and it was not a woman at all, but a Detroit
+drummer for a stove house. Finding that we were not a midnight assassin,
+nor a woman, the drummer let go of the small of our back, and we got
+into our own berth; but it was a narrow escape; the woman with the hare
+lip was in the upper berth. We found that out in the morning when she
+talked through her nose at the porter about fetching a step ladder for
+her to climb down on.
+
+
+
+
+PARALYSIS IN A THEATRE
+
+Inasmuch as there seems to be no other business before the house, we
+desire, Mr. Speaker, to arise to a personal explanation. There was
+something occurred at the Opera House, the last night that the Rice
+Surprise Party played “Revels,” that placed us in a wrong position
+before the public.
+
+Mr. Gunning, the scene painter, had prided himself that the
+transformation scene that he had fixed up for the play was about as nice
+as could be, and as we confessed that we had only got an imperfect view
+of it, the night before, from one side of the house, he insisted that
+we take a seat right in front of the stage, in the parquette, and get a
+good view of it.
+
+There were a good many legs in the show, and we didn't want to sit right
+down in front all the evening, so we compromised the matter by
+agreeing to sit in the dress circle until it was about time for the
+transformation scene, and then, after the giddy girls had all been
+behind the scenes, we would go down and take a front seat, right back of
+the orchestra, and take in the transformation scene.
+
+Well, they had got through with the high kicking, and all gone off,
+except one girl, a gipsy, who was going to sing a song, and then a bell
+would ring and the whole stage effects would change as if by magic. When
+she had got to the end of her song and had waltzed off to the left, we
+got up and walked down in front, and took one of a whole row of vacant
+seats, put on our spectacles, and were ready. Do you know, every cuss in
+that audience saw us go down there? They all thought we had gone there
+to be nearer the dizzy tights, and they began to clap their hands and
+cheer. We think Chapin, the lawyer, who doesn't like us very well,
+started it, and every kid in the gallery took it up, and the house
+fairly rung with applause at the sight of our bald head well down in
+front. We never felt so mean since we quit stealing sheep.
+
+The crowd laughed and hi-hi'd, and the stage manager took the applause
+for an _encore_, and ordered the girl to go out and sing some more. She
+knew better, knew they were guying the bald-headed man in front, and all
+the troupe knew it, and the girls put their heads out from the wings and
+laughed; but the girl came out and sung again. If she didn't wink at us
+when she came out, then we don't know what a wink is, and we have been
+around some, too.
+
+She sang some confounded love song, such as “Darling, Kiss My Eye
+Winkers Down,” or “Hold the Fort,” or something, and kept looking at us
+every moment, and smiling like a church sociable. The crowd took it all
+in, too. Her dress was cut decolette, or low necked at the bottom, and
+we were nearer to the angelic choir than a bald headed man of family
+ever ought to be, but there was no help for it. She was the only girl
+in the troupe that wore black tights, and we thanked our stars for that,
+but even with all those mitigating circumstances in our favor the affair
+had a bad look, and we admit it. Of course any one would know that we
+wouldn't go out of our way to see any black stockings, but it looked as
+though we had, to the crowd.
+
+We have faced death on many a field of carnage, but we never knew what
+it was to want to be away from a place quite so much as then. If you
+know how a man feels when he is stricken with paralysis, or a piece of
+a brick house, you can imagine something about it. We tried to put on a
+pious look, a deaconish sort of expression, like a man who is passing
+a collection plate in church, but the blushes on our face did not look
+deaconish at all. We tried to look far away, and think of the hereafter,
+or the heretofore, but that Gipsy warbling “Darling Eyes of Marine
+Blue,” and forty girls in the wings making up faces, and five hundred
+people back of us having fun at our expense was too much, and we just
+wanted to die. If there had been a trap door to let us down into the
+beer saloon below, we would have taken passage on it in a minute.
+
+But she finally got through singing, the transformation scene came on,
+and we went back to our seat in the dress circle, a changed man, and
+we never looked at a person in the audience after that, but when the
+performance was over and we came out, and Chapin said, “Hello, old man,
+guess we got even with you that time,” we felt like murdering somebody
+in cold blood and feathers. Hereafter if anybody ever catches us taking
+a front seat at a leg drama, they can take it out of our wages. Mr.
+Speaker, we have spoken.
+
+
+
+
+THE QUEEREST NAME.
+
+There is a case in Chicago where a young man is going to apply to have
+his name changed. The man's name is Easus, and he is now about eighteen
+years old, and just beginning to go into society. It is alleged that
+he was engaged to be married to an heiress, but she has broken off the
+engagement until he can get his name changed. She was not very much
+mashed on the name, anyway, and Monday night, as she was with him coming
+out of Haverly's Theatre, something happened that broke her all up.
+
+The young man's father was a pious man, and he named his son Abijah.
+His companion nicknamed him “Bige.” Coming out of the theatre with his
+intended on his arm, an old friend, a drummer for a Chicago grocery
+house, happened to see him, and he went up to him and said, “Why, Bije
+Easus, how are you?” Young Mr. Easus shook hands with his friend, and
+introduced him to his girl, and she looked at the profane drummer out
+of one corner of her eye and trembled for his soul as she thought how he
+would be sure to go to hell when he died.
+
+Mr. Easus explained to his friend as they walked out of the building,
+that he was engaged to the girl, and when they parted at the platform
+of the street car the drummer grabbed her by the hand and shook it as a
+terrier would a rat and said, “Well, Mrs. Bije Easus, that is to be, let
+me wish you many happy returns.”
+
+Mr. Easus colored up, the girl was as mad as a wet hen when she pried
+her fingers apart, and they rode home in silence. At the gate she said
+to him, “Bije Easus, I never till to-night knew what a horrid name I was
+going to take upon myself, and I have made up my mind that I cannot go
+through the remainder of my natural life in Chicago, being alluded to as
+a 'little female Bije Easus.' Mr. Easus, I trust we part friends. If you
+can come to me by any other name, you would be sweet, but Bije Easus
+I will never have on my calling cards.” The young man has employed a
+lawyer and will have his name changed. The girl had a narrow escape, and
+she may thank the drummer for calling her attention to it.
+
+
+
+
+CHURCH KENO.
+
+While the most of our traveling men, our commercial tourists, are nice
+Christian gentlemen, there is occasionally one that is as full of the
+old Nick as an egg at this time of year is full of malaria. There was
+one of them stopped at a country town a few nights ago where there was a
+church fair. He is a blonde, good-natured looking, serious talking chap,
+and having stopped at that town every month for a dozen years, everybody
+knows him. He always chips in towards a collection, a wake or a rooster
+fight, and the town swears by him.
+
+He attended the fair, and a jolly little sister of the church, a married
+lady, took him by the hand and led him through green fields, where the
+girls sold him ten cent chances in saw dust dolls, and beside still
+waters, where a girl sold him sweetened water with a sour stomach, for
+lemonade, from Rebecca's well. The sister finally stood beside him while
+the deacon was reading off numbers. They were drawing a quilt, and as
+the numbers were drawn all were anxious to know who drew it. Finally,
+after several numbers were drawn it was announced by the deacon that
+number fifteen drew the quilt, and the little sister turned to the
+traveling man and said, “My! that is my number. I have drawn it. What
+shall I do?” “Hold up your ticket and shout keno,” said he.
+
+The little deaconess did not stop to think that there might be guile
+lurking in the traveling man, but being full of joy at drawing the
+quilt, and ice cream because the traveling man bought it, she rushed
+into the crowd towards the deacon, holding her number, and shouted so
+they could hear it all over the house, “_Keno!_”
+
+If a bank had burst in the building there couldn't have been so much
+astonishment. The deacon turned pale and looked at the poor little
+sister as though she had fallen from grace, and all the church people
+looked sadly at her, while the worldly minded people snickered. The
+little woman saw that she had got her foot into something, and she
+blushed and backed out, and asked the traveling man what keno meant. He
+said he didn't know exactly, but he had always seen people, when they
+won anything at that game, yell “keno.” She isn't exactly clear yet
+what keno is, but she says she has sworn off on taking advice from pious
+looking traveling men. They call her “Little Keno” now.
+
+
+
+
+THE ADVENT PREACHER AND THE BALLOON.
+
+There occasionally occurs an incident in this world that will make a
+person laugh though the laughing may border on the sacrilegious. For
+instance, there is not a Christian but will smile at the ignorance of
+the Advent preacher up in Jackson county who, when he saw the balloon of
+King, the balloonist, going through the air, thought it was the second
+coming of Christ, and got down on his knees and shouted to King, who
+was throwing out a sand bag, while his companion was opening a bottle of
+export beer, “O, Jesus, do not pass me by.”
+
+And yet it is wrong to laugh at the poor man, who took an advertising
+agent for a Chicago clothing store for the Savior, who he supposed was
+making his second farewell tour. The minister had been preaching the
+second coming of Christ until he looked for Him every minute. He would
+have been as apt to think, living as he did in the back woods, that a
+fellow riding a bicycle, with his hair and legs parted in the middle,
+along the country road, was the object of his search.
+
+We should pity the poor man for his ignorance, we who believe that when
+Christ _does_ come He will come in the old fashioned way, and not in a
+palace car, or straddle of the basket of a balloon. But we can't help
+wondering what the Adventist must have thought, when he appealed to his
+Savior, as he supposed, and the balloonist shied a sand bag at him and
+the other fellow in the basket threw out a beer bottle and asked, “Where
+in ------ are we?”
+
+The Adventist must have thought that the Savior of mankind was traveling
+in mighty queer company, or that He had taken the other fellow along as
+a frightful example. And what could the Adventist have thought when he
+saw a message thrown out of the balloon, and went with trembling limbs
+and beating heart to pick it up, believing that it was a command from
+on high to sinners, and found that it was nothing but a hand bill for a
+Chicago hand-me-down clothing store.
+
+He must have come to the conclusion that the Son o Man had got pretty
+low down to take a job of bill posting for a reversible ulster and
+paper collar bazar. It must have been food for reflection for the Advent
+preacher, as he picked up the empty beer bottle, shied at him from the
+chariot that he supposed carried to earth the redeemer of man. He must
+have wondered if some-Milwaukee brewer ad not gone to heaven and opened
+a brewery.
+
+Of course we who are intelligent, and who would know a balloon if we saw
+it, would not have had any such thoughts, but we must remember that
+this poor Advent preacher thought that the day had come that had been
+promised so long, and that Christ was going to make a landing in a
+strong Republican county. We may laugh at the Adventist's disappointment
+that the balloon did not tie up to a stump and take him on board, but it
+was a serious matter to him.
+
+He had been waiting for the wagon, full of hope, and when it came, and
+he saw the helmet on King's head and thought it was a crown of glory,
+his heart beat with joy, and he plead in piteous accents not to be
+passed by, and the confounded gas bag went on and landed in a cranberry
+marsh, and the poor, foolish, weak, short-sighted man had to get in his
+work mighty lively to dodge the sand bags, beer bottles, and rolls of
+clothing store posters.
+
+The Adventist would have been justified in renouncing his religion and
+joining the Democratic party. It is sad, indeed.
+
+
+
+
+THE CAUSE OF RHEUMATISM.
+
+One of the most remarkable things in medical science is a discovery
+recently made by a Philadelphia physician When so many hundreds of years
+pass over without any new discovery being made, and when one _is_ made,
+like vaccination, and they are not dead sure whether it amounts to
+anything or not, a new discovery that the discoverer will swear by is
+a big thing. This Philadelphia doctor has discovered that rheumatism is
+the direct result of cold feet.
+
+There is no discovery that has ever been made in the human anatomy that
+stands to reason any more than this. Many thousands of men are going
+around crippled and bent with rheumatism, and suffering untold agonies,
+and they have never known what caused their bones to ache. Of course
+they knew that their wives had cold feet, but they had no idea that
+every time those No. 2 icicles were placed in the small of the back to
+get warm that they were sowing the seeds of rheumatism.
+
+We presume there is a hundred pounds of male rheumatism to every square
+inch of cold female foot, and the Philadelphia doctor should be thanked
+by men of rheumatic tendencies as well as by women of arctic pedal
+extremities for this timely discovery. There is no woman who enjoys
+seeing her husband in the throes of rheumatic pains, and now that they
+know that their cold feet have brought about so much suffering, we trust
+they will try and lead a different life.
+
+Of course we do not expect any woman is going to bed and leave her feet
+out on the floor, or under a coal stove. This could not be expected. But
+they can adopt some method to soften the rigors of a hard winter. They
+can paint their feet a nice warm color or have a summer sunset painted
+on the instep, or a fire-place on the bottom of their feet. Anything
+that will make their feet seem warm will be a relief to their rheumatic
+husbands. A pair of zinc overshoes to wear in bed would help some very
+cold feet several degrees.
+
+Men are too valuable to be crippled up with rheumatism just for the
+temporary comfort they can confer upon their wives by allowing the small
+of their backs to be used in lieu of a grate fire. We trust that the
+cold footed portion of our female population will look at this matter in
+its true light, and if necessary leave their feet in the porter's room
+at bed time and get a check for them.
+
+
+
+
+HOW A GROCERY MAN WAS MAIMED.
+
+The shooting of the grocery man at Appleton, by the man to whom he
+presented a bill, reminds us of the only grocery man we ever maimed for
+presenting a bill. His name was Smith, and he lived at La Crosse. We
+presume there have been meaner men built than this man Smith was at that
+time, though how it could be possible we cannot see. We had run up quite
+a bill at his grocery, and were willing to keep trading right along, but
+somehow he got wormy, and said that this thing had to stop.
+
+We told him we never traded with him because we wanted his goods, but
+just to give him the benefit of our society, and we pointed out to him
+the injury it would be to his business to have us quit trading at his
+store. We told him that people would think that he had cheated us, and
+they would not come there any more. He said he knew it would be pretty
+tough, but he would try and struggle along under it.
+
+Well, there was no use arguing, and finally by helping him do his chores
+we got the bill all paid but a dollar and a half, and then he began his
+persecutions. He called us a baldheaded old catamaran. He would follow
+us into a saloon, when some one treated, and take our glass of beer,
+and say he would give us credit on account. He would catch our dog and
+propose to cut a piece of his tail off, and give us credit at so much an
+inch.
+
+He would meet us coming out of church, and right before folks he would
+ask us to go down to the brewery and play pedro. He would say he would
+come up to our house for dinner some time, and everything wicked. One
+day we stopped at his store to enjoy his society, and eat crackers and
+cheese--for be it known we never took offence at him, in fact we sort of
+liked the old cuss--when he told us to take a seat and talk it over.
+
+We sat down on a cracker box that had bees wax on it, and after a heated
+discussion on finances, found that we had melted about two pounds of wax
+on our trousers, and Smith insisted on charging it up to us. This was
+the last hair, and when he called us a diabolical, hot-headed guthoogen
+our warm southern blood began to boil. We seized a codfish that had been
+hanging in front of the store until it had become as hard and sharp as a
+cleaver, and we struck him.
+
+The sharp edge of the codfish struck him on the second joint of the
+forefinger, and cut the finger off as clean as it could have been done
+with a razor.
+
+He said that settled it, and he gave us a receipt in full, and ever
+afterwards we were firm friends.
+
+One thing he insists on, even now, and that is in telling people who
+ask him how he lost his finger, that he wore it off rubbing out seven-up
+marks on a table while playing pedro.
+
+He is now trying to lead a different life, being city clerk of La
+Crosse, but this article will remind him of old times, and he can
+remember with what an air of injured innocence we wiped the blood off
+that codfish and hung it up for a sign, and how Smith sold it the next
+day to Frank Hatch for a liver pad. No, thank you, we don't drink.
+
+
+
+
+CAMP MEETING 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.
+
+People don't want to be sunburnt in the night. It seems to us as
+though the work of converting could be done as well in a full moon, but
+statistics show that such is not the case, and we are willing to give
+the camp meeting attendants the benefit of the doubt.
+
+Again, it may be that the moon is to blame. No one would blame the moon,
+if it was full, and looked down on an ordinary camp meeting, if it got
+sick at the stomach, staggered behind a cloud, turned pale and refused
+to come out until the camp meeting was pulled by the police.
+
+
+
+
+ANOTHER VIEW OF THE CASK
+
+A new face has been put on the killing of old Mr. Utley, in Green Lake
+county, by his son, since the son has made his statement. At the time
+the first news was received we felt inclined to lay it up against young
+Mr. Utley, as there is nothing that hurts our feelings worse than to
+hear that a boy in the first flush of manhood, when the pin feathers are
+just appearing on his upper jaw and when the world is all before him to
+conquer and lay at his feet, has deliberately shot six No. 40 calibre
+bullets into various places in the person of his venerable father, who
+has nurtured him from childhood, stored his mind with useful knowledge,
+or perchance played mumblety peg with a shingle across the place where
+in later years another father may plant oblong pieces of leather,
+because of his habit of leaning his youthful stomach across the gate
+whereon swings a gentle maiden belonging to this other father, the while
+giving her glucose in regard to a beautiful castle that he will rear
+with his own hands on a commanding eminence, surrounded with vines and
+roses, into the golden portals of which he will usher her and empty into
+her lap the precious treasures of the orient, when the cuss knows that
+he will never be able to earn more than twelve shillings a day on a farm
+the longest day he lives, and that if she marries him she will have to
+take in stairs to scrub and cook liver over an oil stove, and wear the
+same dress she is married in till it will stand alone. We say that we
+are opposed to young men killing their fathers. It has never seemed
+right to us. But since the supplemental returns in this case are all in,
+and we learn that old Mr. Utley was a drunken bulldozer who would take
+the farm horses and go off to town on a three days' drunk, leaving the
+young man to do all the work, and come back complaining because the work
+was not done, and if the boy attempted to explain, he would be knocked
+down with a stick of cord wood, and that on this occasion he was engaged
+in trying to dissect young Utley with a butcher knife, claiming that
+he was going to hang his hide on the fence, and cut out his liver and
+stomach, and other things that Dr. Tanner has given a furlough, and that
+the young man shot his father just to keep peace in the family, and to
+save his own life, and that there were four quarts of raw whisky in
+the old man's panjandrum when he turned up his toes, we feel like
+apologizing to the young man and telling him that he did his country a
+great service in wiping out his sire, baby mine. When an old man gets so
+he can't enjoy himself without filling up with whisky and cutting slices
+off the livers of live people, the sooner he climbs the golden stair the
+better.
+
+
+
+
+THE PIOUS DEACON AND THE WORLDLY COW.
+
+One of those incidents that cause a pious man to damn the whole animal
+creation occurred at Janesville last week. A business man that we all
+know, got up last Tuesday morning and took a walk down by Monterey, to
+view the beauties of nature and get up an appetite for breakfast. He is
+a man who weighs close onto 150 pounds, though he is as kitteny as
+anybody when occasion calls for kittenishness.
+
+Gazing into the crystal waters of Rock River, it occurred to him that
+he would take a bath, so he disrobed himself, laid his clothes upon
+the ground and plunged in. He had been sporting with the wavelets, and
+waving with the sportlets for some minutes, when he heard a bellowing on
+shore, and he looked up to see a cow pawing the ground and running her
+horns into his clothes. You know how the smell of blood or carrion will
+cause the mildest mannered cow to get on her ear and paw the ground and
+bellow. Not that there was any blood or carrion there, but the cow acted
+that way. She may have got the smell of a Democrat from his clothes.
+Anyway she made Monterey howl, and the large man in the water dove down
+for stones to throw at the cow. She had run one horn through one leg of
+his pants, and the other horn through the broad part, and was engaged
+in chewing his shirt, when a rock struck her on the rump and she started
+off with those two garments for the blind asylum, where she evidently
+belonged, shaking her head to get the pants off her horns, and chewing
+the shirt as though it was a bran mash..
+
+The pious man rushed out of the water towards the cow and said “co-boss,
+co-boss,” but she took one look at his shape and turned away and didn't
+co-boss very much. A war map of the thoughts of this Janesville business
+man, as he saw the cow go away, would sell well, if it was illustrated
+by a picture of a native Zulu picking buchu leaves. He said he was a
+pious man, and had always tried to lead a different life, and do the
+fair thing, but hereafter he would be blanked if he wouldn't kill every
+blanked cow that he came across.
+
+The only things the cow had left were his hat, vest and shoes and
+stockings. He put them on and started after the cow. The vest was one of
+these grandfather's clock vests, that stop short, never to go again, a
+sort of emigrant vest, that comes high. It was not a long, lingering,
+emotional vest; it was not what would be called a charitable vest,
+because charity begins at home, and covers a multitude of back pay into
+the treasury. He tried to remember some of the ten commandments, to
+repeat, but the only one he could call to mind was “Pull down Thy Vest.”
+
+His eyes swept the horizon to see if anybody was looking, and he could
+see that the grounds about the blind asylum were alive with people
+of both sexes. He thanked heaven that by the inscrutable ways of
+Providence, people were made blind, but his joy at the calamity was
+mingled with sorrow when he thought that the teachers at the asylum were
+endowed with the most perfect eyesight.
+
+As the cow neared the gate of the grounds he made one effort to head her
+off, but she run by him, and then he attempted to take his pistol from
+the hind pocket of his pants to kill himself, when he realized again
+that he was indeed barefooted from his vest to his stockings, and he
+sat down under a tree to die of slow starvation, but before he began to
+starve he got up again and resumed an upright attitude, on account of
+ants. It is a picnic for a nest of ants to partake of a human being who
+has lost his or her trousers, as the case may be, and he followed the
+cow, saying “co-boss” in the most pitiful accents that were ever used by
+a Janesville man.
+
+The cow looked around, and as she did so the pants caught on a sapling
+and were pulled off her horns and dropped upon the ground. The pious
+man looked upon this as a direct interposition of Providence, and he was
+sorry he swore. He got into his trousers so quick that it made his head
+swim, and just as the crowd at the asylum had come down to the gate
+to see what strange looking calf was following the cow home, the man
+started on a run for town, leaving the shirt with the cow.
+
+The people at the asylum have the shirt, and it has the initials of the
+man worked in the neck band, but he will never call for it. One sleeve
+is chewed off, and the bosom is rent with conflicting emotions and cow's
+teeth. The man sells nails and skimmers with a far off expression, and
+don't want cows to run at large any more.
+
+
+
+
+THE QUESTION OF CATS.
+
+The New York Humane Society has at last taken action, looking to the
+destruction of improper, immoral and friendless cats, and agents are
+at work capturing the nocturnal prowlers, and turning them over to the
+proper authorities of the society, who cause them to be killed.
+
+This action cannot but be favorably commented upon by all loyal
+citizens, and as the Milwaukee Humane Society is a branch of the New
+York society, it is only reasonable to suppose that it will not be long
+before our home society will be engaged in cat extermination. There is
+a great field here for such a society, and applause awaits the humane
+people who have banded together to put these cats out of their misery.
+
+We know there are those who will say that cats are not in misery when
+they give vent to those soul-stirring passages from unwritten opera,
+under the currant bushes, but we cannot but think that they are in the
+most crushing misery which it would be a charity to put them out of, or
+they would not chew their words so, and expectorate imaginary tobacco
+juice, mingled with hair and profanity. We know that human beings when
+they are enjoying each others society do not groan, and scratch, and
+Samantha around with their backs up, and their eyes sot, and run up
+board fences, and it is a safe inference to draw that these after dark
+cats are in pain. Of course cats are not human, though they are endowed
+with certain human instincts, such as staying out nights, and following
+other cats.
+
+Sitting on the sharp edge of a board fence for hours, gazing at a
+neighboring cat, and occasionally purmowing, may be likened by the
+student of nature, to human beings who sit for hours on a cast iron seat
+in the park, with arms around each other; but it is far different. We
+have yet to hear of instances where quantities of hair have been found
+on the ground in the parks, and no young man or young woman, after an
+evening in the park, comes to his place of business in the morning, with
+eyes clawed out, ears chewed, or so stiff as to be unable to get up from
+under the stove without being kicked. Weighing this matter carefully and
+in an unbiased manner, we must give the chromo for good conduct, correct
+deportment, and good citizenship, to the human beings who frequent the
+parks at night, over the cats who picnic under our gooseberry bustes,
+and play Copenhagen on our area fences, when those who have brought them
+up from innocent kittenhood think they are abed and asleep.
+
+So it is plain that the humane society has got work to do. We, as a
+people, have got tired of seeing a Thomas cat that never paid any taxes,
+get upon a pile of wood, swell his tail up to the size of a rolling pin,
+bid defiance to all laws, spit on his hands and say in ribald language
+to a Mariar cat, of a modest and retiring disposition, “Lay on, Mac
+Duff, and blanked be he who first cries purmeow.” This thing has got to
+cease. The humane society will soon be on the track of the enemy.
+
+We know that the war is about to commence, because Mr. Holton has
+resigned the presidency of the society. But there are bold men in the
+society that are not so tender-hearted as Brother Holton, and they will
+fight this cat question to the bitter end.
+
+We can almost see Mr. Oliver, with his trusty shot gun, going through
+back alleys at midnight, his white plume always to be found where cat
+hair is the thickest. John Woodhull will meet him, after the enemy is
+driven over the fence in disorder, and taken refuge under the shrubbery,
+and they will compare notes and cats. Good Mr. Spencer sees the
+handwriting on the wall, and his voice will be still for cats. Winfield
+Smith and Chas. Ray will go out in the pale moonlight with stuffed clubs
+and sell cats short, while Prof. McAllister and Chaplain Gordon, of the
+Light House, will sing a solemn requiem for the repose of the alleged
+souls of the midnight opera performers on the back fence, and a grateful
+people will pass resolutions of thanks that where once all was chaos
+and cat hair, all will be peace and good will towards morning. And may
+grace, mercy, peace and plenty of cat scalps abide with the bold night
+riders of the Humane society of Milwaukee. Scat!
+
+
+
+
+THE KNIGHT AND THE BRIDAL CHAMBER.
+
+There was one of those things occurred at a Chicago hotel during the
+conclave that is so near a fight and yet so ridiculously laughable that
+you don't know whether you are on foot or a horseback. Of course some of
+the Knights in attendance were from the back woods, and while they were
+well up in all the secret workings of the order, they were awful “new”
+ in regard to city ways.
+
+There was one Sir Knight from the Wisconsin pineries, who had never been
+to a large town before, and his freshness was the subject of remark.
+He was a large hearted gentleman, and a friend that any person might
+be proud to have. But he was fresh. He went to the Palmer House Tuesday
+night, after the big ball, tired nearly to death, and registered his
+name and called for a bed.
+
+The clerk told him that he might have to sleep on a red lounge, in a
+room with two other parties, but that was the best that could be done.
+He said that was all right, he “had tried to sleep on one of them cots
+down to camp, but it nearly broke his back,” and he would be mighty
+glad to strike a lounge. The clerk called a bell boy and said, “Show the
+gentleman to 253.”
+
+The boy took the Knight's keister and went to the elevator, the door
+opened and the Knight went in and began to pull off his coat, when
+he looked around and saw a woman on the plush upholstered seat of the
+elevator, leaning against the wall with her head on her hand. She was
+dressed in ball costume, with one of those white Oxford tie dresses, cut
+low in the instep, which looked, in the mussed and bedraggled condition
+in which she had escaped from the exposition ball, very much to the
+Knight like a Knight shirt. The astonished pinery man stopped pulling
+off his coat and turned pale. He looked at the woman, and then at the
+elevator boy, whom he supposed was the bridegroom, and said:
+
+“By gaul, they told me I would have to sleep with a couple of other
+folks, but I had no idea that I should strike a wedding party in a
+cussed little bridal chamber not bigger than a hen coop. But there ain't
+nothing mean about me, only I swear it's pretty cramped quarters, ain't
+it, miss?” and he sat down on one end of the seat and put the toe of one
+boot against the calf of his leg, took hold of the heel with the other
+hand and began to pull it off.
+
+“Sir!” says the lady, as she opened her eyes and began to take in the
+situation, and she jumped up and glared at the Knight as though she
+would eat him.
+
+He stopped pulling on the boot heel, looked up at the woman, as she
+threw a loose shawl over her low neck shoulders, and said:
+
+“Now don't take on. The bookkeeper told me I could sleep on the lounge,
+but you can have it, and I will turn in on the floor. I ain't no hog.
+Sometimes they think we are a little rough up in Wausau, but we always
+give the best places to the wimmen, and don't you forget it,” and he
+began tugging on the boot again.
+
+By this time the elevator had reached the next floor, and as the door
+opened the woman shot out of the door, and the elevator boy asked the
+Knight what floor he wanted to go to. He said he “didn't want to go to
+no floor,” unless that woman wanted the lounge, but if she was huffy,
+and didn't want to stay there, he was going to sleep on the lounge, and
+he began to unbutton his vest.
+
+Just then a dozen ladies and gentlemen got into the elevator from the
+parlor floor, and they all looked at the Knight in astonishment. Five
+of the ladies sat down on the plush seat, and he looked around at them,
+picked up his boots and keister and started for the door, saying:
+
+“O, say, this is too allfired much. I could get along well enough with
+one woman and a man, but when they palm off twelve grown persons onto
+a granger, in a sweat box like this, I had rather go to camp,” and he
+strode out, to be met by a policeman and the manager of the house and
+two clerks, who had been called by the lady who got out first and who
+said there was a drunken man in the elevator. They found that he was
+sober, and all that ailed him was that he had not been salted, and
+explanations followed and he was sent to his room by the stairs.
+
+The next day some of the Knights heard the story, and it cost the Wausau
+man several dollars to foot the bill at the bar, and they say he is
+treating yet. Such accidents will happen in these large towns.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE GIRL RACE.
+
+The Minneapolis fair has been for some months advertising a race of
+twenty miles between a California and a Minnesota girl, on horseback,
+and on Wednesday it occurred. The girls were splendid horsewomen, but
+they had to change horses each mile, and the horses were strangers to
+the girls, and excited, and the crowd of 30,000 was excited, and the
+girls were kicked, trampled on and jammed into saddles by main strength,
+and away the horses would go, the crowd howling, the horses flying and
+the poor girls sighing and holding on with their teeth and toe nails,
+expecting every moment to be thrown off and galloped over by the horses
+and the crowd.
+
+The pandemonium was kept up until the seventh round, when the saddle
+of Miss Jewett, the Minnesota girl, slipped, and she was thrown to the
+ground on the back stretch, and the crowd clamored for the master of
+ceremonies to send her another horse, while the California girl whooped
+it up around the track. They had to send a stretcher for the girl, and
+she was brought to the judge's stand as near a cold corpse as could be,
+her pale face showing through the dirt, and her limber form telling its
+own story.
+
+Then people that had been enjoying the “fun” looked at each other as
+much as to say, “We are the biggest fools outside of congress, to enjoy
+coldblooded murder, and call it fun.” The girl will live, though some
+of her bones are warped. This whole subject of lady horseback riding is
+wrong. The same foolish side saddles are used that were used before
+the flood, with no improvement since Eve used to ride to town after the
+doctor when Adam had the rheumatiz.
+
+Women can ride as well as men, if they are given a show, but to place
+them on a horse with both legs on one side of the animal, so they have
+to allow for the same weight of other portions of the body on the other
+side to balance them, is awkward and dangerous, and it is a wonder that
+more do not fall off and squash themselves, A well built woman is as
+able to ride as a man. Her legs are strong enough to keep her on a
+horse--we say legs understandingly, because that is the right name for
+them--if she can have one on each side, but to shut one leg up like
+a jack-knife and hang it up on a pommel, and get a check for it, and
+forget that she has got a leg, and to let the other one hang down
+listlessly beside the horse, the heel of the foot pounding him in the
+sixth rib, is all nonsense, and those two legs, that ought to be the
+main support of the rider, are of no more use than two base ball clubs
+would be hung to the saddle. For all the good legs do on a side saddle
+they might as well be taken off and left at home.
+
+Of course they are handy to have along if a lady wants to dismount, out
+in the woods, and pick flowers, or climb a tree after a squirrel, but
+the minute she gets in the saddle her legs are not worth the powder to
+blow them up. And talk about exercise and developing muscle, walking a
+mile is better than riding all summer.
+
+In walking, the legs and all the muscles of the body are brought into
+action, and the blood courses through the veins, and a girl looks like a
+thoroughbred, but in horseback riding the legs lay dormant, get to sleep
+and have to be waked up when the owner dismounts, and all the exercise
+is got by portions of the human frame that never has seemed to us as
+though there was absolute need of greater development.
+
+It is true that horseback riding makes the cheeks-red. Well, blood that
+wouldn't rush to the head after being churned that way wouldn't be worth
+having. It has to go somewhere. It can't go to the legs, because
+they are paralyzed, being curled up like a tailor, mending trousers.
+Horseback exercise for ladies, on a side saddle, is a delusion and a
+snare, and does not amount to a row of pins, and it never will be worth
+a cent until women can ride like men. Then the lower limbs--now it is
+_limbs_--will be developed and health will be the result, and there will
+be no danger of a saddle turning and a helpless woman being dragged to
+her death.
+
+There is nothing indelicate about riding on both sides of a horse,
+if they once get used to it. But they have got to get over this
+superstition that to ride on horseback a woman must put her limbs up in
+curl papers.
+
+
+
+
+THE TROUBLE MR. STOREY HAS.
+
+A dispatch from Chicago says that Wilbur F. Storey, of the _Times_, is
+in a bad state, and that he gets around by leaning on his young wife
+with one hand and a cane with the other, that he believes his latter end
+is approaching, and that he is giving liberally to churches and has quit
+abusing ministers, and is trying to lead a different life.
+
+We should have no objections to Mr. Storey's going to heaven. However
+much he might try to revolutionize things there, and run the place,
+there will be enough of us there to hold the balance of power and
+prevent him from doing any particular damage. Besides, we do not believe
+he is responsible for the cussedness of his newspaper. It is the wicked
+young men he keeps. The four that we know, Wilkie, Snowdon, Seymour
+and Doc Hinman, are enough to make the truly good Mr. Storey have night
+sweats. They never refuse when you ask them up, and they are full of
+guile.
+
+Storey got fooled the worst on Snowdon. Snow-don is a graduate of a nice
+Christian college at Ripon, a beautiful blonde young man with the most
+resigned and pious countenance we ever saw, one that seems to draw
+people to him. His heart is tender and he weeps at the recital of
+suffering. A stranger, to look at his face in repose, would say that he
+was an evangelist and the pillar of some church, and that he associated
+only with the truly good, but he plays the almightiest game of draw
+poker of any man in Chicago.
+
+The boys say that when Storey engaged Snowdon, after the fire, he got
+him to attend to the Sunday school department, and to keep track of the
+church sociables and to report the noon prayer meetings, but that while
+he was giving him instructions in the duties that he would be expected
+to perform, Storey suggested that as the evening was well advanced that
+they play a game of “old maid,” an innocent game played with cards.
+
+Mr. Snowdon hesitated at first, said it was something he never allowed
+himself to do, to touch a card, as he had promised his old professor,
+Mr. Merrill, of Ripon college, that he never would do anything that
+would bring reproach upon his _almira mater_, but seeing it was Storey
+he would play one game, just for luck. Well, you know how it is. One
+word brought on another, they drifted, by easy stages, into draw poker,
+and before Snowdon left he had won two hundred and eighty dollars and,
+an oroide watch chain of Storey.
+
+Mr. Storey told his wife the next morning that he never was so deceived
+in a pious looking young person in his life. “Why,” said he, as he was
+thumbing over the Bible to read a chapter before morning prayers, “the
+tow headed cuss would draw to a pair of deuces and get an ace full. Let
+us unite in prayer.”
+
+However, he was not going to see any other paper secure Snowdon's
+talent, so he gave him a box stall up in the top of the _Times_
+building, and any day, after 3 o'clock in the afternoon, you can go
+there and borrow a couple of dollars of him, if you are in Chicago hard
+up.
+
+The _Sun_ hopes Mr. Storey may live as long as he can make it pay, and
+when he dies that he may go to the celestial regions, but he must not go
+and build any temporary seats and charge a dollar a head for us fellows
+from the country to see the procession go by. We can stand those things
+here on earth, but when we get over there we must have a square deal, or
+jump the game.
+
+
+
+
+TRAGEDY ON THE STAGE.
+
+The tendency of the stage is to present practical, everyday affairs in
+plays, and those are the most successful which are the most natural. The
+shoeing of a horse on the stage in a play attracts the attention of the
+audience wonderfully, and draws well. The inner workings of a brewery,
+or a mill, is a big card, but there is hardly enough tragedy about it.
+If they could run a man or two through the wheel, and have them cut up
+into hash, or have them crowned in a beer vat? audiences could applaud
+as they do when eight or nine persons are stabbed, poisoned or beheaded
+in the Hamlets and Three Richards, where corpses are piled up on top of
+each other.
+
+What the people want is a compromise between old tragedy and new comedy.
+Now, if some manager could have a love play, where the heroine goes into
+a slaughter house to talk love to the butcher, instead of a blacksmith
+shop or a brewery, it would take. A scene could be set for a slaughter
+house, with all the paraphernalia for killing cattle, and supe butchers
+to stand around the star butcher with cleavers and knives.
+
+The star butcher could sit on a barrel of pigs' feet, or a pile of heads
+and horns, and soliloquize over his unrequited love, as he sharpened
+a butcher knife on his boot. The hour for slaughtering having arrived,
+cattle could be driven upon the stage, the star could knock down a steer
+and cut its throat, and hang it up by the hind legs and skin it, with
+the audience looking on breathlessly.
+
+As he was about to cut open the body of the dead animal, the orchestra
+could suddenly break the stillness, and the heroine could waltz out from
+behind a lot of dried meat hanging up at one side, dressed in a lavender
+satin princess dress, _en train_, with a white reception hat with
+ostrich feathers, and, wading through the Blood of the steer on the
+carpet, shout, “Stay your hand, Reginald!”
+
+The star butcher could stop, wipe his knife on his apron, motion to
+the supe butchers to leave, and he would take three strides through the
+blood and hair, to the side of the heroine, take her by the wrist
+with his bloody hand, and shout, “What wiltest thou, Mary Anderson de
+Montmorence?” Then they could sit down on a box of intestines and liver
+and things and talk it over, and the curtain could go down with the
+heroine swooning in the arms of the butcher.
+
+Seven years could elapse between that act and the next, and a scene
+could be laid in a boarding house, and some of the same beef could be on
+the table, and all that. Of course we do not desire to go into details.
+We are no play writer, but we know what takes. People have got tired of
+imitation blood on the stage. They kick on seeing a man killed in one
+act, and come out as good as new in the next. Any good play writer can
+take the cue from this article and give the country a play that will
+take the biscuit.
+
+Imagine John McCullough, or Barrett, instead of killing Roman supes with
+night gowns on, and bare legs, killing a Texas steer. There's where you
+would get the worth of your money. It would make them show the metal
+within them, and they would have to dance around to keep from getting a
+horn in their trousers. It does not require any pluck to go out behind
+the scenes with a sword and kill enough supes for a mess. Give us some
+slaughter house tragedy, right away.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+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 express man 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 grey hound 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 fore-head 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.
+
+“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 brake-men 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 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.
+
+
+
+
+DON'T LEAVE YOUR GUM AROUND.
+
+A woman at Wyocena, who chews gum, laid her “quid” on a green paper
+box, and when she came to chew it again was poisoned and it was with
+difficulty her life was saved. This reminds us of an accident that
+happened to Mary Anderson when she was here last. Mary will remember
+that in the second scene of “Ingomar,” just when Parthenia was winding
+herself around the heart of the barbarian, she looked pale, and whenever
+she would try to say sweet words to him, she acted as though she was on
+a lake excursion.
+
+During some of the love passages we remember a far away look in her
+eyes, as though she was searching for the unfathomable, or looking for
+a friendly railing to lean over, and when her bosom heaved with emotion
+she acted as though she expected to hear from down country, and doubted
+whether her boots would remain on her feet or throw up their situation.
+Those who sat in the left box will remember that when she threw her head
+on Ingomar's shoulder, that she spit cotton over towards the back of the
+stage, and acted like the little girl that had been eating tomatoes.
+
+Ingomar seemed to notice that something was the matter, and he kept his
+face as far from Parthenia as the rules of polite society would admit,
+and the theory that she had been eating onions, which was advanced by a
+bald-headed man in the dress circle, found many believers. However, that
+was not the case, as we found by inquiring of a gentlemanly supe. It is
+well known that Miss Anderson is addicted to the gum chewing habit, and
+that when she goes upon the stage she sticks her chew of gum on an old
+castle painted on the scenery.
+
+There was a wicked young man playing a minor part in the play, who had
+been treated scornfully by Mary, as he thought, and he had been heard to
+say he would make her sick. He did. He took her chew of gum and spread
+it out so it was as thin as paper, then placed a chew of tobacco inside,
+neatly wrapped it up, and stuck it back on the old castle. Mary came
+off, when the curtain went down, and going up to the castle she bit
+like a bass. Putting the gum, which she had no idea was loaded, into her
+mouth, she mashed it between her ivories and rolled it as a sweet morsel
+under her tongue. It is said by those who happened to be behind the
+scenes, that when the tobacco began to get in its work there was the
+worst transformation scene that ever appeared on the stage. The air,
+one supe said, seemed to be full of fine cut tobacco and spruce gum,
+and Mary stood there and leaned against a painted rock, a picture of
+homesickness.
+
+She was pale about the gills, and trembled like ap aspen leaf shaken
+by the wind. She was calm as a summer's morning, and while concealment,
+like a worm in an apple, gnawed at her stomach, and tore her corset
+strings, she did not upbraid the wretch who had smuggled the vile pill
+into her countenance. All she said, as she turned her pale face to the
+painted ivy on the rock, and grasped a painted mantel piece with her
+left hand, as her right hand rested on her heaving stomach, was, “I die
+by the hand of an assassin.” And the soft scenic moon rose up slowly,
+and calmly she looked down from the flies, and Mary was saved. Women
+can't be too careful where they put their gum.
+
+
+
+
+THE WAY TO NAME CHILDREN.
+
+The names of Indians are sometimes so peculiar that people are made to
+wonder how the red men became possessed of them. That of “Sitting Bull,”
+ “Crazy Horse,” “Man Afraid of his Horses,” “Red Cloud,” etc., cause a
+good deal of thought to those who do not know how the names are given.
+The fact of the matter is that after a child of the forest is born the
+medicine man goes to the door and looks out and the first object that
+attracts his attention is made use of to name the child. When the mother
+of that great warrior gave birth to her child the medicine man looked
+out and saw a bull seated on its haunches; hence the name “Sitting
+Bull.” It is an evidence of our superior civilization that we name
+children on a different plan, taking the name of some eminent man or
+woman, some uncle or aunt to fasten on to the unsuspecting stranger.
+Suppose that the custom that is in vogue among the Indians should be in
+use among us, we would have, instead of “George Washington” and “Hanner
+Jane,” and such beautiful names, some of the worst jaw-breakers that
+ever was. Suppose the attending physician should go the door after a
+child was born and name it after the first object he saw. We might have
+some future statesman named “Red Headed Servant Girl with a Rubber Bag
+of Hot Water” or “Bald-headed Husband Walking Up and Down the Alley with
+His Hands in His Pockets swearing this thing shall never Happen Again.”
+ If the doctor happened to go the door when the grocery delivery wagon
+was there he would name the child “Boy from Dixon's Grocery with a
+Codfish by the Tail and a Bag of Oatmeal,” or if the ice man was the
+first object the doctor saw some beautiful girl might go down to history
+with the name, “Pirate with a Lump of Ice About as Big as a Solitaire
+Diamond.” Or suppose it was about election time, and the doctor should
+look out, he might name a child that had a right to grow up a minister,
+“Candidate for office so Full of Bug Juice that His Back Teeth are
+Afloat;” or suppose he should look out and see a woman crossing a muddy
+street, he might name a child “Woman with a Sealskin Cloak and a Hole in
+Her Stocking going Down Town to Buy a Red Hat.” It wouldn't do at all
+to name children the way Indians do, because the doctors would have the
+whole business in their hands, and the directories are big enough now.
+
+
+
+
+ABOUT RAILROAD CONDUCTORS.
+
+About the time the Wisconsin Central conductors were being hauled over
+the coals, some paper did a very unjust thing by insinuating that there
+was about to be a general overhauling on the old established roads, and
+carried the idea that there was crookedness among conductors who have
+been trusted employees for more years than the reporters of the papers
+making the insinuations have lived.
+
+This is entirely wrong. It is well enough to joke conductors about
+“dividing with the company,” and all that, and the conductors take such
+jokes all right, and laugh about them, but when a serious charge is made
+by a newspaper it is no joking matter.
+
+Men who have held responsible positions for fifteen years under managers
+who are the sharpest men in this country, are not apt to be crooked,
+and we notice that when there is a chance they are promoted, and if they
+leave the railroad it is always to enter into a better business, and
+they are honored everywhere.
+
+We hold that no man can occupy a position on one of our great railroads
+for ten years if he is crooked. It would not pay a conductor to steal,
+if he had the desire. They are all men of families, well connected, and
+many of them have children grown up. Would they do an act that would
+bring disgrace not only upon themselves but their relatives, wives,
+children, and forever debar them from society for a paltry few
+dollars that they could bilk a railroad company out of? The idea is
+preposterous, and an insult to their intelligence.
+
+As well say that the bookkeepers of our business houses, the managers
+of our manufactories, were systematically stealing from employers. The
+conductors have got sense. This talk about stealing is disgusting.
+You send your wives and children off on a train liable to meet with
+accident. The first thing you do if you are acquainted with the road is
+to find out what conductor is going to run the train. If it is one you
+know, you feel just as secure as though the wife and children were under
+the escort of your brother.
+
+You know that if anything happens the first thought of the conductor is
+the safety of the women and children, at the expense of his own safety.
+And when your loved ones come home safe, and you meet them at the train,
+and the conductor stands upon the platform as the train backs into
+the depot, looking at nobody, but his eye fixed upon the chances of
+accident, you always feel as though you wanted to put your arm around
+him and say, “Bully for you, old boy.”
+
+If your wife gets out of money on a journey the conductor goes down into
+his _own_ pocket, and not into the railroad company's, and tells her not
+to worry, as he hands her what money she wants. If your child is taken
+sick on the journey, who but the conductor sees to sending a dispatch to
+you quicker than lightning, and who brings a pillow in from the sleeper
+and makes the little one as comfortable as he would his own little one
+at home?
+
+You appreciate these things at the time, but some day you will say, “How
+can a man drive a fast horse on eighty dollars a month?” Then you
+think you are smart. We will tell you. The conductors are pretty sharp
+business men. They can't travel all the time, and come in contact with
+all the world, and not be sharp. They see chances to make money outside
+of their business.
+
+For instance, one of them who is a good judge sees a horse at some
+interior town that he knows is worth three times as much in Milwaukee or
+Chicago as the owner asks for it. He would be a fool if he did not buy
+it. We have known a conductor to make more money on two horse trades
+than his salary would amount to for three months. Would you object to
+his doing it? He did not neglect the business the company paid him to
+perform.
+
+Sometimes a conductor feels in his inmost heart that the indications are
+that wheat is going up. Is it any worse for him to take a deal in
+wheat than it is for the deacon in his church? If he makes five hundred
+dollars on the deal, and puts an addition on his house, is it the square
+thing for you to say he stole it out of the company? Their knowledge
+of railroads and business frequently gives them an idea that stocks are
+liable to go up or down, and often they invest with good results.
+
+We will take the chances with conductors, as square men, by the side
+of any business men, and it makes us as mad as a wet hen to hear people
+talk about their stealing. As well say that because one bank cashier
+steals that they are all robbing the banks. Quit this, now.
+
+
+
+
+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 will be 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, 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+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. When we told her
+that a piece of beefsteak 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 tip-toe, to see if she was asleep.
+She found the girl with all her dolls on the floor, having a doll's
+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 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 nobody 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+SHOOTING ON SUNDAY, WITH THE MOUTH.
+
+There is nothing in the world that is so beautiful as to see a sporting
+man, one who loves to shoot the wild prairie chicken and chase the
+bounding duck over the plains, have a respect for the Sabbath day. There
+are too many of our sporting friends who, if they are out for a week's
+shooting, forget that they should lay away the deadly breech loader
+on Sunday, after oiling it, and busy themselves reading good books, or
+loading cartridges.
+
+However, we are proud to number among our acquaintances one sporting
+gentleman who would sooner cut a dog in two than to hunt on Sunday. It
+is related of him that on one occasion while in camp in a deer country,
+that his hounds got after a buck one Sunday morning, and that our friend
+was so incensed at the dogs that he seized his gun and shot one of the
+dogs dead, besides wounding the deer, and that he had to follow the deer
+over four miles before he could overtake the animal and put it out of
+its misery.
+
+A wicked companion said that he shot at the deer and killed the dog
+accidentally, but those who know Mr. Van Brunt would not believe the
+story for a moment. Not long since this gentleman left his home at
+Horicon and went to Owatonna, Minn., for a few weeks' hunt. He hunted a
+good deal in town, and became somewhat acquainted with the fair sex as
+well as the chickens and other ducks of the prairies. However, Sunday
+came, and while the other wretches went out snooting on Sunday, our
+friend hied himself to the Sabbath school. His presence was observed
+by a teacher, and he, by the way, observed _her_ presence, and being a
+stranger and a pious looking man, she invited him to help her teach her
+class. He accepted, and seated beside the fair teacher, he chipped in an
+occasional remark to the class, while he looked into the soulful, pious
+eyes of the handsome teacher. She introduced him to the superintendent
+as a pious young man from Wisconsin, and the superintendent invited him
+to address the school.
+
+It was new business to our friend, but he said he never had anything
+sawed off onto him unless he stood it like a man, so he got up, with
+the girl's eyes on him, and told the children the beautiful story of the
+cross, and how Samson went up in a chariot of fire, and Adam was found
+in the bullrushes by a Sunday school teacher, while he was shooting blue
+wing teal, and how Noah and Sat Clark built an ark and coasted around
+Uoricon lake and landed on Iron Ridge and sent out a canvas-back duck
+to see if there was any living thing this side of Schleisingerville, and
+how the duck came back with a sprig of wild celery in its bill which it
+had found at Lake Koshkonong.
+
+He told how the locusts came down on the democratic party and lected
+Garfield, and counseled the children to be good and they would have a
+soft thing. He said evil communications corrupted two of a kind, and
+they could not be too careful with their pennies, and advised them to
+give up the soul destroying habit of buying taffy, and try and lead a
+different life, and put their money into the missionary box, where the
+wicked cease from troubling, and give us a rest.
+
+He would have gone on all the afternoon, only the superintendent of
+the Sunday school told the children that the exercises would close
+with “Little Drops of Water,” and our friend sat down and wiped the
+perspiration from his brow.
+
+The teacher said that his words had opened new beauties to her in the
+Scriptures, though he was a little off on some of his statistics. He
+told her, by way of apology, that she couldn't expect much religion from
+a man that came from so strong a democratic county as Dodge county. This
+may be all a lie, but if it is, we got it from one of the best liars of
+the State.
+
+
+
+
+A WASHINGTON SURPRISE PARTY.
+
+When Mr. and Mrs. Hayes returned to Washington from the far west their
+Ohio friends got up a surprise party for them. They had just retired for
+the night, rather early on account of fatigue, when the door bell rung
+violently. Mr. Hayes put on his pants, and throwing one suspender over
+his shoulder and holding on to it with his hands, he went to the door
+and asked who was there. On being answered that John Sherman was there,
+Mr. Hayes supposed there was something important, and he opened the
+door.
+
+Mr. Sherman came in with a market basket of sandwiches, followed by
+about a hundred ladies and gentlemen, loaded down with articles usually
+taken to surprise parties. Mr. Hayes was taken entirely by surprise, and
+as he buttoned his trousers and tucked in his night shirt behind he said
+he hoped they would excuse him for a moment till he went up stairs and
+put on a collar and some stockings, and called Mrs. Hayes, who was in
+bed.
+
+Matt Carpenter said never mind; he would call Mrs. Hayes, and he gave a
+hop, skip and jump and went up stairs three at a time, followed by Mr.
+Hayes, who was shivering from the contact of his bare feet with the oil
+cloth in the hall.
+
+“What is the trouble, Rutherford?” said Mrs. Hayes, as Mr. Carpenter
+rushed into the room.
+
+“Get up and dress yourself, you are surrounded, and escape is
+impossible.”
+
+Mrs. Hayes screamed as she saw the bold buccaneer, pulled the bed
+clothes over her head and said, “We are lost.”
+
+At this point Hayes, who had got on a pair of woolen stockings, and was
+buttoning on a paper collar, said: “I say, Matt, of course this is all
+right, and I don't want you to be offended, but won't you just step out
+into the hall so Mrs. Hayes can get her clothes on.”
+
+“Why, to be sure,” said Matt, as he got up out of a rocking chair, on
+which there were three skirts, a red petticoat, an emancipation corset,
+and a pair of striped stockings with long suspenders arranged to button
+on the waist, “of course I will go out, but you need not mind me. I am
+near sighted.”
+
+Matt went down stairs with the crowd, and when he was gone Mrs. Hayes
+got her head out from under the clothes and wanted to know what the
+trouble was, and if they could not fly.
+
+Hayes told her not to be alarmed, as it was only one of those d--d
+surprise parties. He said there were two hundred hungry people down
+stairs, with baskets of sandwiches and pickles, and the chances were
+that they would eat up everything there was in the house, and mash
+crumbs and cold tongue into the carpet.
+
+Mrs. Hayes got up and sent Rutherford into the linen closet after a
+clean white skirt, and he returned with a night gown and had to be sent
+back. While she was taking her hair down out of the curl papers, and
+putting bandoline over her ears, she gave Mr. Hayes her opinion of
+surprise parties. She said that little shrimp, Alexander Stephens, would
+sit on the piano keys, and knock his boot heels against the piano case,
+and that Dave Davis would fall over the music rack, and sit down in her
+best rocking chair and break it.
+
+Just then she touched her nose with a curling iron that she had heated
+in a gas jet, and screamed and woke Mr. Hayes up, and he wanted to know
+what was the matter. She rolled over in bed, felt of her nose to see
+if it was there, and told Mr. Hayes she had been dreaming there was a
+surprise party came to the house.
+
+He said: “My dear, I trust there is no such fate in store for us. You
+are nervous. Try a little of that crab apple cider, and lay on your
+face, and see if you can't go to sleep.”
+
+
+
+
+THE DIFFERENCE IN CLOTHES.
+
+There is something about the practice of “practical joking” that is
+mighty pleasant and enjoyable, if the joke is on somebody else. It was
+about six years ago that we quit practical joking, and the reason was
+that the boys played one on us that fairly broke our back. We had always
+been full of it, and an opportunity to play a joke on a friend was a
+picnic for us, but this time we had all the tuck taken out and fairly
+unraveled.
+
+A party consisting of Hogan, Hatch, Root, Wood and Webb had been down
+from La Crosse to the marshes shooting ducks for a week. We had prepared
+to break camp and take the train to Brownsville at 2 o'clock, from which
+we took a little steamer for La Crosse.
+
+We were out shooting and did not get to camp until everything was packed
+up, and just had time to catch the train with our hunting clothes on.
+The rest of the fellows had been in camp an hour, and had put on their
+good clothes, and washed up and looked like gentlemen, as they were,
+while we looked like a tramp, which we were not. All got on the little
+steamboat, and hugged around the boiler with the other passengers, for
+it was a cold night.
+
+We felt a little ashamed of the old hunting clothes that had been worn
+so many years, and were covered with blood and dirt, but there was no
+chance to change, and we sat down with the boys. Finally Root, who was
+the biggest hector in the world, and a fine looking gentleman, turned to
+the captain of the boat and said, pointing to us:
+
+“I wish, captain, you would ask this red-headed muskrat trapper to sit
+on the other side of me. He smells bad.”
+
+If lightning had struck us we could not have been more astonished. The
+passengers all looked at the dirty looking “muskrat trapper,” and stuck
+up their noses. The captain asked us in a polite manner if we would
+not please move and get on the “lee side” of the passengers. He said
+he didn't mean any offence, but the smell of muskrats oftentimes made
+people sick.
+
+Well, it was a pretty tight fix, but we forced a laugh and looked around
+at the rest of the boys in a familiar way, and began talking to them.
+Not a man of them would recognize us. The captain turned to Hogan and
+said, “Is this a friend of yours?” Hogan put on a look of disgust, and
+said he had never seen us before. “However,” says Jim, “he may be a very
+deserving person of his class.”
+
+The captain said we had better go to the other end of the boiler and lay
+down with the dogs where it was warm. We tried to pass it off as a joke,
+and turned to Hatch and tried to get into conversation with him about a
+goose he had killed the day before, but he wouldn't have it. He said we
+could get the smell out of our clothes by burying them, and then he went
+on to tell how he shot a skunk once, and spoiled a suit of clothes.
+
+We spoke to Colonel Wood, one of our party, as a last resort, and all he
+said was to draw in his breath with a “Whoosh,” and put his handkerchief
+to his nose. We never felt so mean in the world. The whole gang had
+combined against us, and we got up to leave them, meditating revenge,
+when Walt Webb said, “Let's throw the cuss overboard.” We went and laid
+down on the valises, and tried to think of some way to get even with
+the boys, when Root told the captain that they had got some valuables in
+those valises, and they didn't want any tramp laying down on them, and
+he came along and actually drove us off of our own valise. 4
+
+To make the matter still worse, a homely looking Norwegian dog that we
+had borrowed to take on the hunt, and which was the worst looking brute
+that ever was, and which had been the laughing stock of the camp for a
+week, at this point came up to us, wagged his tail and followed us, and
+the boys said, “Look at the dog the muskrat trapper owns.” That was the
+worst give away.
+
+We walked around on deck, and would occasionally stop and speak to one
+of the boys, hoping they had given us enough and would relent, but all
+the way to La Crosse not one of them would speak to us, and when the
+boat arrived at the landing Root handed us a quarter, in the presence
+of the passengers, and asked if we wouldn't help Mike Doyle, the cook,
+carry the baggage ashore.
+
+It was the worst joke we ever had perpetrated on us, and even after we
+got ashore, and Hatch said, “Come, old sorrel top, let's go and get a
+glass of beer,” we could hardly smile. Since then when we go hunting we
+wear the best clothes we have got.
+
+For years afterwards when fellows were joking, some of the party would
+ask us “if the trapping was good this season.” We got so we could not
+look a myskrat in the face. So we say that practical joking is splendid
+if it is on the other fellow. Always quit when they get it on to you.
+
+
+
+
+A TEMPERANCE LECTURE THAT HURT.
+
+There was probably the most astonished temperance man up above Stevens
+Point the other day that ever was. The name of the temperance man is
+Sutherland.
+
+He is a nice gentleman, but, like many another man, he can never see a
+person with his keg full of bug juice without giving him a talking to.
+
+The other day Sutherland was driving along the road when he overtook an
+Indian who asked for a ride. He was allowed to get in the wagon, when
+Sutherland discovered that the Indian had a breath that would stop a
+temperance clock. He smelled like a sidewalk in front of a wholesale
+liquor store. The Indian was comfortably full, so full that his back
+teeth were floating.
+
+Sutherland thought it was a good time to get in his work, so he began
+talking to the Indian about the wickedness of looking upon the whisky
+when it was bay, and when it giveth its color in the nose. He told the
+Indian of the wrecked homes, the poverty, the disgrace and death that
+followed the use of liquor, and wound up by pleading with him to give
+up his cups and join the angel band and shout hosannas in a temperance
+lodge. The Indian did not understand a word that Suthland was saying,
+but supposing by the looks of his nose and pleading eyes that he wanted
+a drink, the Indian drew a large black bottle from under his blanket and
+handed it to Sutherland, remarking: “Ugh! Dam firewater.”
+
+Sutherland thought that he had made a convert, and telling the Indian
+that he was glad he had resolved to lead a different life, took the
+bottle and dashed it upon the ground, smashing it into a thousand
+pieces.
+
+Well, the air seemed full of Indians. If Sutherland had torn out the
+Indian's heart he could not have hurt the red man worse.
+
+With a war whoop the Indian jumped on the seat, took Sutherland by the
+hair and yanked him out on the ground. Sutherland yelled and the Indian
+galloped over him. The team ran away, and the Indian mauled Sutherland.
+He cut open his face, italicised his nose, put a roof over his eye and
+felt for his knife to stab him.
+
+Sutherland got away and run to Stevens Point, where his wounds were
+bound up. He says if any gentleman wants to take the job of reforming
+Indians he will give up his situation. He meant well, but lacked
+judgment.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+An item in the La Crosse _Chronicle_ says: “Two cats and a dog were
+killed at the high school yesterday for inspection by the class in
+physiology.”
+
+In preparing the youth of the land for a business career there is
+nothing that tends more to ripen the mind and to prepare it for
+overcoming the obstacles that will naturally be found in after life than
+to learn to cut a dog in two.
+
+The ignorance of some of the business men of the present day is largely
+to be attributed to the fact that the instructors of the youth in the
+olden time never taught them how to carve a dog. How many times have we
+been in positions since arriving at man's estate, when poring over some
+great problem of science, where we would have given ten years of the
+front end of our life if we knew how to make both ends meat, even if it
+was dog meat?
+
+The knowledge that the students of the present day obtain in their study
+of the dog will be valuable to them if ever they are caught in a melon
+patch, and a dog fastens his teeth into their garments. They will know
+how to go to work scientifically to unhinge the jaws of a dog, instead
+of pulling one way, while the dog pulls the other, until the cloth or
+the skin tears out.
+
+It will be a great thing to know all about how a dog is put together.
+And if these students are taught how to kill cats they will more than
+get their money back when they grow up.
+
+Ignorant people who have never had the advantages of studying the cat
+when it is dead, attempt to kill them with boot-jacks and empty ale
+bottles and tomato cans, but the next generation will know how to do it
+scientifically, and not hurt the cat.
+
+This is certainly an age of improvement, and the _Sun_ desires that
+school children shall know all about the anatomy of the festive dog and
+the nocturnal cat, if they don't even know how to spell their own names.
+
+
+
+
+BRAVERY OF MRS. GARFIELD
+
+The newspaper correspondents about the White House, echoing the remarks
+made by the doctors, are continually talking of Mrs. Garfield's bravery,
+and we frequently see the statement made that she is “the bravest woman
+in the world,” and all that. While expressing great admiration for the
+gifted lady, in the trying ordeal through which she has passed, and
+admitting that she is brave as an American woman ought to be, and that
+by her conduct she greatly braced up her beloved husband when his liver
+was knocked around into the small of his back by the assassin's bullet,
+and he didn't know whether he was going to live till morning, we must
+say that Mrs. Garfield is no braver than thousands of other good women.
+
+She simply took the chances on his dying, as thousands of other wives do
+every day, and for his good she put on the best face possible, and kept
+her tears back. But how many obscure women have done the same thing,
+as they sat by the side of their dying husbands, and made the patient
+believe that he was getting better, and smiled while their hearts were
+breaking? Was Mrs. Garfield braver than the sister of charity, God bless
+her, who goes from the North to nurse total strangers in a stricken
+southern city, when she knows that within a week the deadly fever will
+kill her?
+
+Compare the President's wife for a moment with the wife of a drunken
+husband, who points a revolver at her heart, and his nervous finger on
+the trigger, while he announces that he will kill her. The wife looks
+him in the eye and says, “Kill me, John, but kiss me first,” and the
+drunken brute breaks down and cries, and she takes the revolver from
+him, puts him to bed, soaks his feet and brings him a good supper. That
+is bravery.
+
+Think of a frail little woman whose life has been one bed of thorns, and
+whose happy hours have been so few that if an hour seems to open to her
+with happiness she dare not enjoy it for fear there is a mistake, and it
+is not hers to enjoy. In the wreck of her life's ambitions and hopes she
+has saved only a dear little girl and her heart is so bound up in her
+that it ceases to beat when she thinks that God may forget that the
+little one is all she has, and call her home.
+
+One day the little one comes home with fever, takes to her bed, and for
+weeks is just on the line between earth and heaven. The little mother,
+hardly able to be upon her feet, believes as firmly as she believes that
+she lives, that her darling will die, and that two hearts will be buried
+in the coffin, and yet she watches beside her night and day with
+smiles on her face, sings to her as though her heart were filled with
+happiness, and occasionally gives expression to a jolly laugh, just to
+brace up her little darling, and make her believe there is no danger,
+and when the doctor says “she will live,” the brave little mother goes
+to her room and cries for the first time, and faints away.
+
+Ah, gentlemen correspondents, you do well to speak of the bravery of the
+President's wife, but you know that these incidents we have related, and
+incidents you have seen in your own experiences, show as great, if not
+greater bravery and heroism than that of the first woman of the land.
+O, the country is full of women who are braver than the bravest man that
+ever walked.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATING THE ASSASSINATION.
+
+It is singular how a great calamity like the attempted assassination of
+the President will bring people together on terms of familiarity, and
+cause them to discuss things that they never knew anything about before.
+People who never thought of such things before, except during the
+cucumber season, have become familiar with their livers and internal
+improvements, and talk as glibly of the abdomen, the umbilicus--as well
+as the cuss who shot him--the peritonitis, the colon, the ilium, the
+diaphragm, the alacumbumbletop and the diaphaneous cholagogue as though
+they had been attending a Chicago meat cutting match at a students'
+dissecting room. Men talk of little else, and this is noticeable more
+particularly among men who have nothing to do.
+
+There were two old men who loaf a good deal around a grocery, discussing
+the wound of the President, and one was trying to illustrate to the
+other how it was. He put on his glasses and took up a butter tryer and
+walked up to a lady customer who was leaning over the counter smelling
+of some boarding-house prunes. She was a large lady, and perhaps as good
+a subject as could have been found. The first old man called the other
+up behind the woman, and said:
+
+“There, the assassin stood about as you do, and looked, probably, the
+same as you do. Now, you take this spigot and point to the woman, about
+here--” and he put the butter tryer on her back, near the belt.
+
+“Yes, I see,” said the second old man, as he nibbled a piece off a soda
+cracker, and pointed the wooden spigot at the woman, with his finger on
+the trigger. The woman was busy looking to see if there were any worms
+in the prunes, and she didn't notice what was going on.
+
+“There,” said the first old man, as he pushed the end of the butter
+tryer a little harder against the woman. “The bullet went in here, and
+went around here close to the liver, though probably it didn't touch
+the liver, passed through the thin membrane, and is probably lodged in
+here,” and he reached around the woman with his left hand to where
+her apron was tied on. “Now, if they cannot extract the ball the great
+danger is from peritonitis--”
+
+At this point the woman observed what was going on, and she was about as
+mad as a woman can be. Seizing a codfish that was on the head of a sugar
+barrel by the tail she whacked the first old gent, who held the butter
+tryer, over the head, and said:
+
+“Peritonitis is beginning to set in, you bald-headed old villain, and
+general prostration will be the result. I will teach you to put your arm
+around me. I am no manikin. Do you take me for a dissecting room? Put
+down that gun, you idiot,” said she, as she wafted the codfish toward
+the second old man, who still held up the spigot.
+
+The grocery man, who was cutting a cheese, came around the counter with
+the cheese knife in his hand, and said he hoped there would be no more
+bloodshed, and asked the old man to put down the butter tryer and go
+out. The two old men went out on the sidewalk, when the woman told the
+grocery man that no woman was safe a moment when those old reprobates
+were allowed to run at large, and when she got so low down as to allow
+people to practice assassination on her with wooden faucets and butter
+tryers she would join a circus. When the two old men got out on the walk
+the second one said to the first:
+
+“Didn't you know the woman?”
+
+“Know her? No. I didn't think it was necessary for a formal introduction
+in a trying time like this, when we all want all the information we
+can get about the great tragedy. There is no accommodation about some
+people. But she has gone out now, so let us carry back the spigot and
+butter tryer, and may be the grocery man will treat to the cider.”
+
+And the two old setters went in and sat down on the barrels and talked
+about how they had known people along in 1837 to be shot all to pieces
+and recover.
+
+
+
+
+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 a 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, and then hear that some infidel who is around the
+country calling God a pirate and a 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
+Inger-soll 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 this is 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 apoplectic, 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 notes 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 give 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 blown up
+bladder. O, good God, don't hurt so. My neck is all chafed.”
+
+And then he will die, and God will continue business at the old stand.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT MONOPOLIES.
+
+There is an association of old fossils at New York calling themselves
+the “Anti-Monopoly League,” that has taken the job on their hands of
+saving the country from eternal and everlasting ruin at the hands of
+the gigantic monopolies, the railroads, and this league, through its
+President, L. E. Chittenden, is sending editorials and extracts from
+speeches delivered by great men who have been refused passes, or who
+have not been retained by railroads to conduct law suits as much as they
+think they ought to be, to newspapers all over the country requesting
+their publication.
+
+_The Sun_ gets its regular share of these documents each week, which
+go into the waste basket with a regularity that is truly remarkable,
+considering that we are not a railroad monopoly. But there is something
+so ridiculous about these articles that one cannot help laughing. They
+claim that the country is in the grasp of the gigantic monopolies, and
+that they will choke the country to death and ruin everybody, though
+what the object can be in running the country and everybody in it, is
+not stated.
+
+These monopolies have taken the country when it was as weak as gruel,
+and hoisted it by the slack of the pants to the leading position among
+nations. The monopolies have built their track all over God's creation,
+where land could not be given away, have hauled emigrants out there
+and set them up in business, and made the waste land of the government
+valuable. They have made transportation so cheap that the emigrant from
+Germany of last year can send wheat from Dakota to the Fatherland, and
+Bismarck and King William can get it cheaper than they can wheat grown
+within a mile of their castles.
+
+These monopolies that the played out nine-spot anti-monopoly leagues
+are howling against have made the country what it is, and if there
+is anybody in this country that don't like it, they can get emigrant
+tickets and go to Germany or Norway and take the places of the men that
+the monopolies are causing to settle here. Of course we could all run
+railroads better than the owners run them, but as long as we have not
+got money enough to buy them we better shut up our yap and let Jay Gould
+and his fellows do what they please with their own, as long as they
+permit the country to prosper as it is prospering now. The anti-monopoly
+leaguers had better go to driving street cars.
+
+
+
+
+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 well 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 Sheehan 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 doorkeeper
+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 will go around assassinating
+dogs,” we as a people, would think more of them, and perhaps build them
+a decent station house to rest in.
+
+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.
+
+But the dog is dead, and the little man meditates a terrible revenge. He
+is going to have a goat that can whip a policeman, he says; then there
+will be fun around the parsonage.
+
+
+
+
+AND HE ROSE UP AND SPAKE.
+
+As a general thing railroad men are “pretty fly,” as the saying is,
+and not very apt to be scared. But a case occurred up on the La Crosse
+division of the St. Paul road last week that caused a good deal of hair
+to stand.
+
+The train from St. Paul east runs to La Crosse, where all hands are
+changed, and the new gang run to Chicago. On the trip of which we speak
+there was placed in the baggage car at St. Paul a coffin, and at Lake
+City a parrot in a cage was put in. Before the train got to Winona other
+baggage was piled on top, so the coffin only showed one end, and the
+parrot cage was behind a trunk, next to the barrel of drinking water,
+out of sight, and where the cage would not get jammed. At La Crosse the
+hands were changed, and conductor Fred Cornes, as 6:35 arrived, shouted
+his cheery “All aboard,” and the train moved off. The coffin was seen
+by all the men in the baggage car, and a solemnity took possession of
+everybody. Railroad men never feel 'entirely happy when a corpse is on
+the train.
+
+The run to Sparta was made, and Fred went to the baggage car, and
+noticing the coffin and the mournful appearance of the boys, he told
+them to brace up and have some style about them He said it was what we
+had all to come to, sooner or later, and for his part a corpse or two,
+more or less, in a car made no difference to him. He said he had rather
+have a car load of dead people than go into an emigrant train when some
+were eating cheese and others were taking off their shoes and feeding
+infants.
+
+He sat down in a chair and was counting over his tickets, and wondering
+where all the passes come from, when the Legislature is not in session.
+The train was just going through the tunnel near Greenfield, and Fred
+says.
+
+“Boys, we are now in the bowels of the earth, way down deeper than a
+grave. Whew! how close it smells.”
+
+Just then the baggagemaster had taken a dipper of water from the barrel,
+and was drinking it, when a sepulchral voice, that seemed to come from
+the coffin, said:
+
+“Dammit, let me out!”
+
+The baggage man had his mouth fall of water, and when he heard the voice
+from the tombs, he squirted the water clear across the car, onto the
+express messenger, turned pale, and leaned against a trunk.
+
+Fred Cornes heard the noise, and, chucking the tickets into his pocket
+and grabbing his lantern, he said, as he looked at the coffin:
+
+“Who said that! Now, no ventriloquism on me, boys. I'm an old traveler,
+and don't you fool with me.”
+
+The baggage man had by this time got his breath, and he swore upon his
+sacred honor that the corpse in there was alive, and asked to be let
+out.
+
+Fred went out of the car to register at Greenfield, and the express
+messenger opened the door to put out some egg cases, and the baggage man
+pulled out a trunk. He was so weak he couldn't lift it. They were all as
+pale as a whitewashed fence.
+
+After the train left Greenfield they all gathered in the car and
+listened at a respectful distance from the coffin. All was as still as
+a car can be that is running twenty-five miles an hour. They gathered
+a little nearer, but no noise, when Cornes said they were all off their
+base, and had better soak their heads.
+
+“You fellows are overworked, and are nervous, The company ought to give
+you a furlough, and pay your expenses to the sea shore.”
+
+Just then there was a rustling as if somebody had rolled over in bed and
+a voice said, as plainly as possible:
+
+“O, how I suffer!”
+
+If a nitro-glycerine bomb had exploded there could not have been more
+commotion. The express man rushed forward, and was going to climb over
+into the tender of the engine, the baggage man started for the emigrant
+car to see if there was anybody from the place in Germany that his hired
+girl came from, and Cornes happened to think that he had not collected
+fare from an Indian that got on at Greenfield with a lot of muskrat
+skins. In less than four seconds the corpse and parrot were the sole
+occupants of the car. The three train men and a brakeman met in the
+emigrant car and looked at each other.
+
+They never said a word for about two minutes, when Fred opened the ball.
+He said there was no use of being scared, if the man was dead he was not
+dangerous, and if he was alive the four of them could whip him, if he
+undertook to run things. What they were in duty bound to do was to let
+him out. No man could enjoy life screwed down in a sarcophagus like
+that.
+
+“Now,” says Cornes, “there is a doctor from Milwaukee in the sleeper.
+I will go and ask him to come in the baggage car, and you fellows go in
+and pull the trunks off that coffin, and we will take a screw driver
+and a can-opener and give the man air. That's doing as a fellow would be
+done by.”
+
+So he went and got the doctor and told him he had got a case for him.
+He wanted him to practice on a dead man. The doctor put on his pants and
+overcoat, and went with Fred. As they came into the baggage car the boys
+were lifting a big trunk off the coffin, when the voice said:
+
+“Go easy. Glory hallelujah!”
+
+Then they all turned pale again, but all took hold of the baggage and
+worked with a will, while the doctor held a screw driver he had fished
+out of a tool box.
+
+The doctor said the man was evidently alive, but the chances were that
+he might die from suffocation before they could unscrew all the screws
+of the outside box and the coffin, and he said he didn't know but the
+best way would be to take an ax and break it open.
+
+Fred said that was his idea, and he was just going for the ax when the
+brakeman moved the water barrel, tipped over the parrot cage, and the
+parrot shook himself and looked mad and said. “There, butterfingers!
+Polly wants a cracker.”
+
+Cornes had just come up with the axe, and was about to tell the brakeman
+to chop the box, when the parrot spoke.
+
+“Well, by-----,” said the baggageman. The doctor laughed, the brakeman
+looked out the door to see how the weather was, and the conductor said,
+“I knew it was a parrot all the time, but you fellows were so anxious to
+chop into the box that I was going to let you. I never saw a lot of men
+with so much curiosity.” Then they all united in trying to bribe the
+doctor not to tell the story in Milwaukee.
+
+
+
+
+GOT IN THE WRONG PEW.
+
+When the Young Men's Christian Association left our bed and board,
+without just cause or provocation, and took up its abode in Bon Accord
+Hall, we felt as though we had been bereaved of a fruitful source of
+items, and at first we were inclined to advertise the association, and
+warn dealers not to trust them on our account, as their credit was as
+good as ours, but almost every day we hear of something that will do to
+write up.
+
+The new hall of the association was formerly used by Prof. Sherman as a
+dancing academy, and the other night when young Mr. Collingbourne agreed
+to go around to the dancing school and escort a lady friend home, about
+half past nine, he did not know of the change. At the appointed time
+he went to the place he had always found the dancing school, and at the
+bottom of the stairs he met a solemn looking sort of person who handed
+him a circular and said, “Come in, brother, and partake freely of the
+waters of life.”
+
+“You bet your boots,” says Collingbourne, as he threw his cigar into the
+street, “but don't we get anything but water?”
+
+Mr. Collingbourne is the last man in the world who would appear
+irreverent, but he thought it was a dancing school, and when a mournful
+looking man on the first landing took him by the arm and said, “Come
+all ye who are weary and heavy laden,” he felt that there was an effort
+being made to snatch his watch, so he jerked away from the brother and
+told him he didn't want any taffy, and if he wasn't careful he would get
+kicked so his head would ache.
+
+The good brother thought Collingbourne was a brand that it would be
+creditable to pluck from the burning, so he followed him up stairs,
+telling him there was salvation for all, only to meet with the reply
+that he better mind his own business or he would get salivated so his
+folks would not know him.
+
+At the top of the stairs he met two men that he had never seen at the
+dancing school, and he felt as though he was being cornered for no good,
+as the other fellow had closed in on his rear. The two new brothers each
+took hold of one of his hands, and were telling him how glad they were
+that he had shown a disposition to turn over a new leaf and try to lead
+a different life, and they began to picture to him the beauty of faith,
+when he backed up against the railing and said, “I don't know who you
+fellows are, but you have tackled the wrong boy. I have been brought
+up in this town, and I know all the games, and you can't get me on
+any racket,” and then he looked at the door, as the piano sounded the
+beautiful tune, “From Greenland's Icy Mountains,” and asked, “What time
+does the cotillion break up?” The good brother told him it was early
+yet, and “while the lamp holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may
+return.”
+
+The visitor said he would go in, he guessed, and shake his foot once,
+just for luck, and he opened the door. Such a sight met his eyes as he
+never saw in a dancing school before. The whole congregation nearly, was
+on its knees, and a good man was offering up a prayer that was indeed
+beautiful. Collingborne began to sweat in three different languages, but
+being a gentleman who had the most unbounded respect for religion in all
+its forms, he uncovered his head and bowed reverently while the prayer
+was being uttered.
+
+When it was through he turned to one of the truly good people in the
+hall, that had watched his devotion, and said, “Say, boss, this is
+evidently a new scheme. I thought this was Sherman's dancing school. You
+must excuse my seeming irreverence. If you will kick me down stairs I
+will consider it a special dispensation of providence,” and he went down
+into the wicked world and asked a policeman where the dancing school
+was. All the way home the lady friend asked him what made him so solemn,
+but he only said his boots fit him too quick. He never goes to a dancing
+school now without finding out if it is there yet.
+
+
+
+
+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 “Oleomargerine, 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 hear 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, “Meat me in
+the slaughterhouse 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.
+
+
+
+
+DUCK OR NO DINNER.
+
+There is nothing that gives pious people more annoyance than to hear
+shooting on Sunday on some adjacent marsh while they are worshipping,
+and there is nothing much more annoying to wicked Sunday, hunters than
+to have ducks fly habitually in the vicinity of a church.
+
+Winneconne, up on the Wolf river, is about evenly divided between-church
+going people and those who take more pleasure in standing behind a shot
+gun. When ducks fly about Winneconne in the Spring they follow the river
+up and down, and the bridge in town is a favorite place for hunters to
+stand and pepper the ducks with shot.
+
+One Sunday about three weeks ago the ducks were flying terrible, and
+when the bell rung for church the bridge was pretty well covered with
+hunters, and many worshippers entered the church hard by with the smell
+of powder in their spring bonnets. The hunters were so interested in
+the ducks of the air that they did not notice the ducks on the way to
+church.
+
+Finally the church people all got seated and the minister gave them an
+excellent sermon, which was only occasionally interrupted by the good
+man dodging down behind the pulpit to escape a stray charge of No. 4
+shot which came through the open window. No complaint was made, and no
+sarcastic remarks were made about the wicked men who were out of meat,
+and were shooting up a little for dinner, though there were silent
+prayers offered for the Sabbath breakers.
+
+At last the services were over, and the chair was singing, “A charge
+to keep I have,” as the minister was picking some duck shot out of his
+trousers, when there was a commotion. A wounded duck had fallen on the
+door step of the church and being only “winged” had fluttered into the
+church, and crawled under the seats, when a couple of retriever dogs
+belonging to a German rushed into the sacred edifice and went howling
+under the seats after the duck, while the owner's voice could be heard
+outside yelling, “Rouse mit em!”
+
+Well, some of them, those who had clock work stockings, held their feet
+up in the air to get them away from the dogs, while others jumped up
+on the pews and yelled bloody murder. Some went for the windows, and a
+brakeman tells us that the senior deacon fainted away.
+
+The dogs retrieved the duck, and as the congregation came out of the
+church the German went down toward the bridge wringing the neck of the
+duck and kicking the dogs for not having more sense than to go right
+into a church during service.
+
+The hunters of Winneconne should be talked to by the presiding elder.
+They do very wrong to shoot on Sunday.
+
+
+
+
+THE GUINEA PIG.
+
+Nobody knows who is to blame for bringing the first Guinea pig to this
+country, but certainly he didn't do anything very creditable. A Guinea
+pig does not know anything, and never-learns anything. It is quite a
+neat little plaything for children, and if it had any sense would become
+a pet, but it never learns a thing.
+
+A lady living near a theatre in this city bought a Guinea pig in Chicago
+recently and brought it home, and it has been in the family ever since,
+and it has never learned anything except when it is hungry it goes to
+the lady and nibbles her foot, and how it learned that nobody knows.
+
+One day it got away and strayed into the theatre, where it ran around
+until the audience got seated for the evening performance, when the pig
+began to fool around under the seats, probably looking for the lady that
+owned it. On the front row in the dress circle was a young man and woman
+from Waukesha. Whether the Guinea pig mistook the girl for its owner
+or not is not positively known, but the animal was seen to go under the
+seat occupied by the young woman.
+
+Her attendant was leaning over her shoulder whispering in her ear, when
+suddenly she jumped about two feet high, and grabbed her dress with both
+hands. Her feller had his chin scratched by a pin that held a bow on her
+shoulder, and as he wiped it off he asked her, as she came down into
+the seat again, if she had them often.
+
+A bald-headed citizen who sat next to her looked around at the woman in
+astonishment, and took up his overcoat and moved to another seat. She
+looked sassy at the bald-headed man, and told her escort the man had
+insulted her. He said he would attend to the man after the show was out.
+
+About three seats further down toward the stage there was a girl
+from the West Side, with a young fellow, and they were very sociable.
+Suddenly he leaned over to pick up a programme he had dropped, just
+as the Guinea pig nibbled her instep. She drew herself away from her
+escort, blushing, and indignation depicted on every feature, looked the
+other way, and would not speak to him again during the whole evening.
+He thought she was flirting with somebody else, and he was mad, and they
+sat there all the evening looking as though they were married.
+
+The Guinea pig went on down the row, and presently another woman hopped
+up clear out of the seat, said, “For heaven's sake what was that?” and
+looked around at a man who sat in the seat behind her as though she
+could eat him raw.
+
+Just before the curtain rose the pig got into a lady's rubber and went
+to sleep, and when the performance was over and she went to put on
+the shoe, she screamed a little and jumped up on the seat, and said
+something about rats, which brought an usher to her assistance, and he
+took the Guinea pig and sent it to its owner. For a few minutes there
+was almost as much commotion as there would be at a picnic if a boy
+should break up a nest of hornets.
+
+
+
+
+FAILURE OF A SOLID INSTITUTION.
+
+We are astonished to see that a Boston dealer in canned goods has
+failed. If there is one branch of business that ought to be solid it
+is that of canning fruits and things, for there must be the almightiest
+profit on it that there is on anything. It must be remembered that the
+stuff is canned when it is not salable in its natural state.
+
+If the canners took tomatoes, for instance, when they first came around,
+at half a dollar for six, and canned them, there would be some excuse
+for charging twenty-five cents for a tin thing full, but they wait until
+the vines are so full of tomatoes that the producer will pay the cartage
+if you will haul them away, and then the tomatoes are dipped into hot
+water so the skin will drop off, and they are chucked into cans that
+cost two cents each, and you pay two shillings for them, when you
+get hungry for tomatoes. The same way with peas, and peaches, and
+everything.
+
+Did you ever try to eat canned peas? They are always old back numbers
+that are as hard and tasteless as chips, and are canned after they have
+been dried for seed. We bought a can of peas once for two shillings and
+couldn't crack them with a nut cracker. But they were not a dead loss,
+as we used them the next fall for buck shot. Actually, we shot a coon
+with a charge of those peas, and he came down and struck the water, and
+died of the cholera morbus the next day.
+
+Talk of canned peaches; in the course of a brilliant career of forty
+years we have never seen only six cans of peaches that were worth the
+powder to blast them open. A man that will invent a can opener that will
+split open one of these pale, sickly, hard hearted canned peaches, that
+swim around in a pint of slippery elm juice in a tin can, has got a
+fortune. And they have got to canning pumpkin, and charging money for
+it.
+
+Why, for a dollar a canning firm can buy pumpkins enough to fill all
+the tin cans that they can make in a year, and yet they charge a fellow
+twenty cents for a can of pumpkin, and then the canning establishment
+fails. It must be that some raw pumpkin has soured on the hands of the
+Boston firm, or may be, and now we think we are on the right track to
+ferret out the failure, it may be that the canning of Boston baked beans
+is what caused the stoppage.
+
+We had read of Boston baked beans since school days, and had never seen
+any till four years ago, when we went to a picnic and bought a can
+to take along. We new how baked beans ought to be cooked from years'
+experience, but supposed the Boston bean must hold over every other
+bean, so when the can was opened and we found that every bean was
+separate from every other bean, and seemed to be out on its own
+recognizance, and that they were as hard as a flint, we gave them to
+the children to play marbles with, and soured on Boston baked beans.
+Probably it was canning Boston beans that broke up the canning
+establishment.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+The Decoration Day exercises at Appleton were somewhat marred by a
+discussion as to whether the graves of Confederate soldiers should be
+decorated, and one man--Prof. Sawyer--a soldier who lost a leg in the
+army, said that if anybody should attempt to decorate a rebel soldier's
+grave in his vicinity, it would have to be done over his--Sawyer's--dead
+body.
+
+Notwithstanding this heartrending recital, the graves of rebel soldiers
+in many places in this state and throughout the north, were decorated by
+Union soldiers. What hurt does it do to throw a few flowers on the clay
+that covers one who was once your enemy? Nobody thinks less of the Union
+soldier for it, and it would make the southern mother or sister of the
+dead boy feel so much better to know that kind hands at the north had
+done a noble act.
+
+Suppose this Professor Sawyer had been killed and buried down south,
+and the Confederate people should be decorating the graves of their
+own dead, and they should throw a few flowers on his grave, and some
+hot-headed vindictive rebel should get on his ear and say that the man
+who laid that bouquet on the Yankee's grave would have to take it off
+or fight. The professor, if he laid there and heard it, would feel like
+getting out of the grave, and taking a crutch and mauling the liver out
+of the bigoted rebel.
+
+It is not the rebel's cause that we decorate, but we put a few flowers
+above his remains to show the people who loved him at home, that there
+is nothing so confounded mean about us after all, and that we do as we
+would be done by, and that while we were mad, and sassy, and full of
+fight, eighteen years ago, we want to be friends, and shake hands
+over the respective graves of our loved ones, and quit making fools of
+ourselves.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+A Ridiculous scene occurred a 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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Peck's Sunshine, by George W. Peck
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