HAPPY NEW YEAR, MUM!
“Didn’t have any fun eh? Well, I wish I had as many dollars as I had fun. You see, after Pa got to sleep Ma wanted me and my chum to go to the houses that Pa had called at and return the napkins he had kleptomaniaced, so we dressed up and went. The first house we called at the girls were sort of demoralized. I don’t know as I ever saw a girl drunk, but those girls acted queer. The callers had stopped coming, and the girls were drinking something out of shaving cups that looked like lather, and they said it was ‘aignogg.’ They laffed and kicked up their heels wuss nor a circus, and their collars got unpinned, and their faces was red, and they put their arms around me and my chum and hugged us and asked us if we didn’t want some of the custard. You’d a dide to see me and my chum drink that lather. It looked just like soap suds with nutmaig in it, but by gosh it got in its work sudden. At first I was afraid when the girls hugged me, but after I had drank a couple of shaving cups full of the ‘aignogg’ I wasn’t afraid no more, and I hugged a girl so hard she catched her breath and panted and said, ‘O, don’t.’ Then I kissed her, and she is a great big girl, bigger’n me, but she didn’t care. Say, did you ever kiss a girl full of aignogg? If you did it would break up your grocery business. You would want to waller in bliss instead of selling mackerel. My chum ain’t no slouch either. He was sitting in a stuffed chair holding another New Year’s girl, and I could hear him kiss her so it sounded like a cutter scraping on bare ground. But the girl’s Pa came in and said he guessed it was time to close the place, unless they had a license for an all night house, and me and my chum went out. But wasn’t we sick when we got out doors. O, it seemed as though the pegs in my boots was the only thing that kept them down, and my chum he like to dide. He had been to dinner and supper and I had only been skating all day, so he had more to contend with than I did. O, my, but that lets me out on aignogg. I don’t know how I got home, but I got in bed with Pa, cause Ma was called away to attend a baby matinee in the night. I don’t know how it is, but there never is anybody in our part of town that has a baby but they have it in the night, and they send for Ma. I don’t know what she has to be sent for every time for. Ma ain’t to blame for all the young ones in this town, but she has got up a reputashun, and when we hear the bell ring in the night Ma gets up and begins to put on her clothes, and the next morning she comes in the dining room with a shawl over her head, and says, ‘its a girl and weighs ten pounds,’ or ‘a boy,’ if it’s a boy baby. Ma was out on one of her professional engagements, and I got in bed with Pa. I had heard Pa blame Ma about her cold feet, so I got a piece of ice about as big as a raisin box, just zactly like one of Ma’s feet, and laid it right against the small of Pa’s back. I couldn’t help laffing, but pretty soon Pa began to squirm and he said, ‘Why’n ’ell don’t you warm them feet before you come to bed,’ and then he hauled back his leg and kicked me clear out in the middle of the floor, and said if he married again he would marry a woman who had lost both her feet in a railroad accident. Then I put the ice back in the bed with Pa and went to my room, and in the morning Pa said he sweat more’n a pail full in the night. Well, you must excuse me. I have an engagement to shovel snow off the sidewalk. But before I go, let me advise you not to drink aignogg, and don’t sell tom cats for rabbits,” and he got out of the door just in time to miss the rutabaga that the grocery man threw at him.
WHAT THE DEMOCRATS WILL DO.
The Wisconsin asks, “What will the Democrats do?” We trust it is not betraying a confidence reposed in us by the manager of a party, but we can not allow our neighbor to remain in such dense ignorance, as long as we are possessed of the desired information. “What will the Democrats do?” The Democrats will prove an alibi!
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 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 follow 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.
I WANT TO BE AN ANGEL.
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 open 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 for 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.
SHE WAS NO GENTLEMAN.
From an article in the Leader we gather that Frank Drake, editor of the Rushford Star, was horsewhipped by a woman who was dissatisfied with some article of his that appeared against her, in the Star. A woman that cowhides an editor is no gentleman.
JOKE ON THE HAT.
Somehow, during the election excitement, Frank Hatch happened to bet right just once. He bet a hat, and on Monday he went to Putnam & Philbrick and selected one of the finest silk ones. When he went out in the street every body noticed it, and a reception was held. They all congratulated Frank, except Ike Usher. Ike’s hat was a year old, and the contrast was so remarkable that Ike would not walk on the street with Hatch. Frank said that Ike’s hat used to be a very fine looking hat, but at present it was a disgrace to the force. Mr. Usher was offended, and he swore revenge. He went to a professional drunkard on Division street, and said that if he should happen to get drunk Monday night and Hatch should happen to arrest him, he would give the drunkard five dollars if the drunkard would mash Frank’s new hat. The fellow said he would flatten it flatter than flatness itself. Just after dark Mr. Hatch was walking down Third street, “Whoop, hurrah for Tilden, (hic) ’endrix.” The remark seemed so out of place that Frank went down there. The man was lying on the sidewalk, and telling the barrel to roll over and not take up all the bed. Mr. Hatch accosted the man gently, telling him he would catch cold there, and that he had better go with him to the city hotel. The man said he would—be counted in if he did, and Hatch bent over him to take him by the lily white hand, when a drunken boot came down on the top of that hat, and drove it clean down to Frank’s nose. Of course it could go no further. Then the man pulled Frank down, and the hat struck the end of a salt barrel, knocked it off, and the man raised up and sat down on it, and kicked it into the street. Frank got the man away, and a boy brought his hat to the police station, just as Usher and Littlejohn and Knutson, and all the policeman entered. It is said that all stood on the corner over by Kevin’s watching the arrest. The hat was a sight to behold, as it laid in state on the safe, and all the boys making comments on it. It looked like a six-inch stove pipe elbow that a profane man had been attempting to fit to a five-inch stove pipe. It looked like some old dripping pan that had been thrown out in the street, and had been run over by wagons. It looked like the very dickens. And yet we have no doubt Hatch will say this is a lie, because he now wears a good hat, but we know the hat he now wears he got by trading a flannel shirt to a grasshopper sufferer, and it no more resembles the beautiful new hat he won on election than nothing. After Hatch went out of the office, Usher let the man “escape,” and he is five dollars ahead, and Ike has got even with Hatch.
IT LOOKED LIKE AN OLD DRIPPING PAN.
THE THIRSTY GOPHER.
A Minnesota town got a fire steamer on trial, and tested it by trying to drown out a gopher. After working it six hours, the gopher came out to get a drink. He would have died of thirst if they had kept the hole closed much longer.
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 Rose, 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 her red trail with her hind foot, and back off the stage looking as though she would have to be carried on a dust pan, 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 the 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 Wilhelmj or 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 out, 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.
MATTIE MASHES MINNESOTA.
Mrs. Mattie A. Bridge is meeting with great success in Minnesota. In some places she is retained until she lectures four times. She says the heart of Minnesota is warm towards her. We shall feel inclined to put a head on Minnesota, if it don’t quit allowing its heart to get warm.
WHY THE FEVER DIDN’T SPREAD.
Portage City has had a sensation which, though at one time it looked serious, turned out to be a farce. A girl was taken sick, and a physician was called who pronounced it a case of yellow fever, and he made out a prescription for that disease. Mr. Brannan, editor of the Portage Register, who lives near, got the news, and imparted it to all whom he met, and they in turn told it to others, and a stampede was looked for. Fox turned the Fox House over to Bunker, and had his trunks checked for the Hot Springs. Corning and Jack Turner hired a wagon to take them to Briggsville. Hærtel, the brewery man, offered to sell out his brewery and all his property for eight hundred dollars, and he bought a ticket for Germany. Bunker left the Fox House to run itself, and went to Devil’s Lake. Sam. Branuan, telegraphed to George Clinton, at Denver, not to come home, as the yellow fever was raging, and people were dying off like rotton sheep. And Sam got vaccinated and went to Beaver Dam. The excitement was intense. Men became perfectly wild, and were going to rush off and leave the women and children to the mercies of the dead plague. Chicago and Milwaukee bummers could be seen at the hotels, kneeling beside their sample cases trying to pray, but they couldn’t. Just before the train started that was to carry away the frightened populace, the doctor came up town and said that the girl with the yellow fever was better, and that she was the mother of a fine nine pound boy. The authorities took every precaution to prevent the spread of the yellow fever, by arresting the brakemen whom the girl said was the cause of all the trouble. All is quiet on the Wisconse now.
DRUMMERS TRYING TO PRAY.
TOO PARTICULAR BY HALF.
It is one of the mottoes of THE SUN never to publish anything that would cause a blush to mantle the cheek of innocence, or anybody. And yet, occasionally, a person finds fault. Not long since a man said he liked THE SUN well enough, only it had too much to say about patched breeches, which was offensive to some. Well, some people are so confounded high toned that if they were going to have a patch put on they would have it way up on the small of their back. Some of the best women in the world have sat up nights to sew a patch on their husband’s pants. Martha Washington used to do it. But, G. Lordy, a family newspaper must not speak of a patch. When you take patches away from the people you strike a blow at their liberties. Don’t be too nice.
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 to 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 to the door when the grocery delivery wagon was there, he would name the child “Boy from Dickson’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 Soltaire 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.
AN EDITOR BURGLARIZED.
The residence of John Turner, of the Mauston Star, was entered by burglars a few nights since, and his clothes were stolen, containing all his money and his railroad pass. We can imagine an editor around bare as to legs, etcetery, and out of money, but to be without a railroad pass must indeed be a sad state of affairs. When burglars burgle an editor it is a sign that confidence is restored under Hayes’ administration. We trust that editors throughout the State who are blessed with this world’s goods to the extent of more than one pair of pants, will send one pair at least to John Turner, Mauston, Wis., by express. We are probably as poor as any editor, but we have sent him those alligator pants that have created such a sensation in years gone by. It is true they are a little bit fringy about the bottoms, and the knees are worn through, and concealment, like a worm in the bud, has gnawed the foundation all out of them, but in a little town like Mauston, such things will not be noticed. John, take them, in welcome, and when the cold winds—but you better carry bricks in your coat tail pockets. That is the way we wore them the last three or four years.
PECK’S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.
HIS PA DISSECTED.
“I understand your Pa has got to drinking again like a fish,” says the grocery man to the bad boy, as the youth came in the grocery and took a handful of dried apples. The boy ate a dried apple and then made up a terrible face, and the grocery man asked him what he was trying to do with his face. The boy caught his breath and then said:
“Say, don’t you know any better than to keep dried apples where a boy can get hold of them when he has got the mumps? You will kill some boy yet by such dum carelessness. I thought these were sweet dried apples, but they are sour as a boarding house keeper, and they make me tired. Didn’t you ever have the mumps? Gosh, but don’t it hurt though? You have got to be darn careful when you have the mumps, and not go out bob-sledding, or skating, or you will have your neck swell up biggern a milk pail. Pa says he had the mumps once when he was a boy and it broke him all up.”
“Well, never mind the mumps, how about your Pa spreeing it. Try one of those pickles in the jar there, won’t you. I always like to have a boy enjoy himself when he comes to see me,” said the grocery man, winking to a man who was filling an old fashioned tin box with tobacco out of the pail, who winked back as much as to say, “if that boy eats a pickle on top of them mumps we will have a circus, sure.”
“You can’t play no pickle on me, not when I have the mumps. Ma passed the pickles to me this morning, and I took one mouthful, and like to had the lockjaw. But Ma didn’t do it on purpose, I guess. She never had the mumps and didn’t know how discouraging a pickle is. Darn if I didn’t feel as though I had been struck in the butt of the ear with a brick. But about Pa. He has been fuller’n a goose ever since New Year’s day. I think its wrong for women to tempt feeble minded persons with liquor on New Year’s. Now me and my chum, we can take a drink and then let it alone. We have got brain, and know when we have got enough, but Pa, when he gets to going don’t ever stop until he gets so sick that he can’t keep his stummick inside of hisself. It is getting so they look to me to brace Pa up every time he gets on a tear, and I guess I fixed him this time so he will never touch liquor again. I scared him so his bald head turned gray in a single night.”
“What under the heavens have you done to him now?” says the grocery man, in astonishment. “I hope you haven’t done anything you will regret in after years.”
“Regret nothing,” said the boy, as he turned the lid of the cheese box back and took the knife and sliced off a piece of cheese, and took a few crackers out of a barrel, and sat down on a soap box by the stove, “You see Ma was annoyed to death with Pa. He would come home full, when she had company, and lay down on the sofa and snore, and he would smell like a distillery. It hurt me to see Ma cry, and I told her I would break Pa of drinking if she would let me, and she said if I would promise not to hurt Pa to go ahead, and I promised not to. Then I got my chum and another boy, to help, and Pa is all right. We went down to the place where they sell arms and legs, to folks who have served in the army, or a saw mill, or a threshing machine, and lose their limbs, and we borrowed some arms and legs, and fixed up a dissecting room. We fixed a long table in the basement, big enough to lay Pa out on you know, and then we got false whiskers and moustaches, and when Pa came in the house drunk and lay down on the sofa, and got to sleep, we took him and laid him out on the table, and took some trunk straps, and a circingle and strapped him down to the table. He slept right along all through it, and we had another table with the false arms and legs on, and we rolled up our sleeves, and smoked pipes, just like I read that medical students do when they cut up a man.
“Well, you’d a dide to see Pa look at us when he woke up. I saw him open his eyes, and then we began to talk about cutting up dead men. We put hickery nuts in our mouths so our voices would sound different, so he wouldn’t know us, and was telling the other boys about what a time we had cutting up the last man we bought. I said he was awful tough, and when we had got his legs off and had taken out his brain, his friends came to the dissecting room and claimed the body, and we had to give it up, but I saved the legs. I looked at Pa on the table and he began to turn pale, and he squirmed around to get up, but found he was fast. I had pulled his shirt up under his arms, while he was asleep, and as he began to move I took an icicle, and in the dim light of the candles, that were sitting on the table in beer botles, I drew the icicle across Pa’s stummick and I said to my chum, ‘Doc, I guess we had better cut open this old duffer and see if he died from inflamation of the stummick, from hard drinking, as the coroner said he did.’ Pa shuddered all over when he felt the icicle going over his bare stummick, and he said, ‘For God’s sake, gentlemen, what does this mean? I am not dead.’
“The other boys looked at Pa with astonishment, and I said ‘Well, we bought you for dead, and the coroner’s jury said you were dead, and by the eternal we ain’t going to be fooled out of a corpse when we buy one, are we Doc?’ My chum said not if he knowed his self, and the other students said, ‘Of course he is dead. He thinks he is alive, but he died day before yesterday, fell dead on the street, and his folks said he had been a nuisance and they wouldn’t claim the corpse, and we bought it at the morgue.’ Then I drew the icicle across him again, and I said, ‘I don’t know about this, doctor. I find that blood follows the scalpel as I cut through the cuticle. Hand me the blood sponge please.’ Pa began to wiggle around, and we looked at him, and my chum raised his eye-lid, and looked solemn, and Pa said, ‘Hold on gentlemen. Don’t cut into me any more, and I can explain this matter. This is all a mistake. I was only drunk.’ We went in a corner and whispered, and Pa kept talking all the time. He said if we would postpone the hog killing he could send and get witnesses to prove that he was not dead, but that he was a respectable citizen, and had a family. After we held a consultation I went to Pa and told him that what he said about being alive might possibly be true, though we had our doubts. We had found such cases before in our practice east, where men seemed to be alive, but it was only temporary. Before we had got them cut up they were dead enough for all practical purposes. Then I laid the icicle across Pa’s abdomen, and went on to tell him that even if he was alive it would be better for him to play that he was dead, because he was such a nuisance to his family that they did not want him, and I was telling him that I had heard that in his lifetime he was very cruel to his boy, a bright little fellow who was at the head of his class in Sunday school and a pet wherever he was known, when Pa interrupted me and said, ‘Doctor, please take that carving knife off my stomach, for it makes me nervous. As for that boy of mine, he is the condemndest little whelp in town, and he isn’t no pet anywhere. Now, you let up on this dissectin’ business, and I will make it all right with you.’ We held another consultation and then I told Pa that we did not feel that it was doing justice to society to give up the body of a notorious drunkard, after we had paid twenty dollars for the corpse. If there was any hopes that he would reform and try and lead a different life, it would be different, and I said to the boys, ‘gentlemen, we must do our duty. Doc, you dismember that leg, and I will attend to the stomach and the upper part of body. He will be dead before we are done with him. We must remember that society has some claim on us, and not let our better natures be worked upon by the post mortem promises of a dead drunkard.’ Then I took my icicle and began fumbling around the abdomen portion of Pa’s remains, and my chum took a rough piece of ice and began to saw his leg off, while the other boy took hold of the leg and said he would catch it when it dropped off. Well, Pa kicked like a steer. He said he wanted to make one more appeal to us, and we acted sort of impatent but we let up to hear what he had to say. He said if we would turn him loose he would give us ten dollars more than we paid for his body, and that he would never drink another drop as long as he lived. Then we whispered some more and then told him we thought favorably of his last proposition, but he must swear, with his hand on the leg of a corpse we were then dissecting that he would never drink again, and then he must be blindfolded and be conducted several blocks away from the dissecting room, before we could turn him loose. He said that was all right, and so we blindfolded him, and made him take a bloody oath, with his hand on a piece of ice that we told him was a piece of another corpse, and then we took him out of the house and walked him around the block four times, and left him on a corner, after he had promised to send the money to an address that I gave him. We told him to stand still five minutes after we left him, then remove the blindfold, and go home. We watched him, from behind a board fence, and he took off the handkerchief, looked at the name on a street lamp, and found he was not far from home. He started off saying ‘That’s a pretty narrow escape old man. No more whisky for you.’ I did not see him again until this morning, and when I asked him where he was last night he shuddered and said ‘none of your darn business. But I never drink any more, you remember that.’ Ma was tickled and she told me I was worth my weight in gold. Well, good day. That cheese is musty.” And the boy went and caught on a passing sleigh.
COL. INGERSOLL PRAYING.
Bob. Ingersoll is taking a rest from his persecutions of the Creator, and is traveling in the Yo Semite region of California. Bob does not believe there is a God, but if he was riding a kicking mule, down the precipice near the big trees, and the saddle should turn over with him, and his foot should be caught in the stirrup, after the mule had kicked him a few times in the judgement seat, which is the bowels, in his case, he would be very apt to bellow like a calf, and say “O, Lord, please unbuckle that cussed strap.” We should like to hear Bob had met with some such accident, just so he would recognize the foreign government of the Lord, which at present he totally ignores. Not that we have anything against Ingersoll.
HOW TO INVEST A THOUSAND DOLLARS.
A young man advertises in a Milwaukee paper for a partnership. He wants to invest one thousand dollars in some established business. Go to La Crosse and go to betting on election. It pays, and is an established business. There’s millions in it.
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 circusses, 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 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 faith in the 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 wont 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 the 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 to 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 shot gun, 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.
THE WATERS OF LA CROSSE.
We have heretofore entirely overlooked the magnetic qualities of the La Crosse water. It will be remembered that the Fond du Lac water is advertised as magnetic water, and it has been said that a knife blade, after being soaked in the water will take up a watch key or a steel pen. That is nothing compared to the La Crosse water. Last week a man who had been soaked in La Crosse water, took up a watch, key and all, and a policeman who had been using the water took up the man, with the watch. A pair of ice tongs, made of steel, on being soaked in water, took up a piece of ice weighing over a hundred pounds, and a farmer named Dawson, after drinking the water took up a stray colt. A young couple stopped the other evening and took a drink of water and up Fourth street, and before they got to Seymour’s corner they were walking so close together that you couldn’t tell which the bustle was on. We have never seen water that had so much magnetism in as this. A pot of it on a house is better than a lightning rod.
SARDINEINDIANAPOLIS.
In company with a couple of hundred others who were firm in the belief that the Sardinapalus troupe were under the auspices of the Young Men’s Christian Association, we attended the performance on Monday evening. It was heralded as coming from Booth’s theater, N.Y., where it had a run of four months. Most of them got away while on the trip here, and only a few appeared. The scenery, which was also extensively advertised, was no more than could have been fixed up with a whitewash brush in half a day, by home talent. The play, what there was of it was well rendered, though many doubted the propriety of the king calling around him a lot of La Crosse soldiers, to hear him tell the Greek slave how he loved her. There was much dissatisfaction about the Greek slave. All marble statues of the Greek slave represent her with nothing on but a trace chain around one arm and one leg. But the party who got up this play went behind the returns and invested her with a white night gown, which detracted very much from history. The “soldiers” were picked up among the La Crosse boys, and they got tangled up, and couldn’t form a line to save themselves, and when they stood against the wall it was a melancholy fact that they tickled the ballet girls in the ribs as they passed by. This was highly wrong. It takes the romance out of the affair to gaze upon an Assyrian soldier, covered with armor, and carrying a cover to a wash boiler in his hand, and to think that he is covered with scars won in battle, and then look at him through a glass and have him wink at you, and you find that you have seen him thousands of times standing on the postoffice corner, spitting tobacco juice across the sidewalk at the hydrant. Mrs. Sardinapalus did not appear, having gone to visit her uncle, but “Sard.” stuck to the Greek slave like a sand burr to a boy’s trousers. They laid down together on a bale of paper rags and looked at the dance. The dance was pretty good. First there came out about a dozen girls in tights, with skirts as short as pie crust. Their legs were all round and well got up, showing that the sawdust was evenly distributed, with no chance for dissatisfaction. They capered around, and smiled at the reflection of the red lights in the gallery upon the bald heads before them, and kicked up like all possessed, and then they backed up against the wings and fooled with the La Cross Assyrians, who came down like a wolf on the fold. Then there came out two first-class dancers, one short, fat, plump, but mighty small, so small that she didn’t look as though she was big enough for a cork to a jug. But she could dance. Well, she ought to, as she had no clothes to bother her. Next came a brunette, evidently of French extraction, with a face that was a protection against assault with intent to kill, and legs of the Gothic style. Smith said she was spavined, but that’s a lie. She danced better than all of them, and walked on her big toes till the audience yelled. Then the dancers all got tangled up together, the brunette fell over on the little blonde, stuck her hind foot right in the air as straight as a liberty pole struck by lightning, somebody said “Tableau,” and the curtain went down, and the audience looked at each other as much as to say, “Let’s go home.” The boys in the gallery cheered, and the curtain was rung up again, but her flag was still there. Then they had a fighting scene, where everybody gets mad and goes out into the dressing room and clashes old swords together, and come back wounded. The king, after killing up a lot ahead, got a furlough and came in and lallygaged with the Greek slave a spell, and then the battle was lost, and “Sardine.” said he might as well die for an old sheep as a lamb. So he ordered a funeral pile built of red fire, and he got on it to be burned up. The Greek slave said if that was the game she wanted a hand dealt to her, as wherever “Sard.” went she was going, as she had an insurance policy against fire in the Northwestern Mutual. So he invited her on to the kindling wood, and after hugging enough to last them through perdition—and mighty good hugging it was too—the pile of slabs was touched off, the flames rolled, and “Sard.” and the Greek slave went down to hell clasped in each other’s embrace, and we went to the People’s store and bought a mackerel and went home and told our wife we had been to a democratic caucus. We don’t know what all the other fellows told their wives, but there has been a heap of lying, we know that much.
“SARD.” AND THE GREEK SLAVE.
INSECURE ABODES.
Four men fell out of the Oshkosh jail the other day. If Oshkosh would only imitate Fond du lac, and paper the county jail with wall paper, it might become safe.
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 backwoods, 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, 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 swow 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 book-keeper 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 in 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.