Peck's Compendium of Fun Part 11

Some deacon tells a sinner all about the orthodox h.e.l.l, 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 h.e.l.l, 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 pa.s.ses.

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 pa.s.sage by that route. Anyway, this thing is worth looking into.

PREPARING FOR WAR.

The _Sun_ is no alarmist, but it can see in recent events what it believes to be a preparation for war. All of the manufactories of fire arms and cartridges are working night and day, and the Oneida community have just received an order to immediately can 24,000 cans of baked beans. When the war will break out we do not know, but all this fixed amunition is not being fixed for no 4th of July. It is trouble.

A TONY SLAUGHTER HOUSE.

A Milwaukee paper copies what THE SUN said about killing hogs while under the influence of chloroform, at Keine & Wilson's packing house, and intimates that it is all a lie. Have we lived to this age to have our word doubted by a Milwaukee editor? This is too much. Why, bless the dear man, the half has not been told. The firm we speak of is desirous of building up a trade for gilt edged pork and hams, so every improvement known to the trade is inaugurated. We did not think it necessary to describe the whole process, but now that our word is doubted, it is necessary to do so. When the late lamented hog is transferred from the parlor where he was chloroformed, his body is gently, yet firmly placed in a gold lined tank, filled with boiling Florida water and cologne, where the body remains until the bristles become loose, when it is transferred to a table covered with purple velvet, and the bristles are removed by the gentlemanly ushers, dressed in the fas.h.i.+ons of the time of George III, armed with gold candle sticks, studded with diamonds. Then the body is taken by easy stages, into the presence of the intestine transporter, who reclines upon a downy couch. He raises up, brushes a particle of dust from his sleeve, and with a silver knife cuts the hog from Dan to Beersheba, and the patent insides are received on a silver salver, and divided among attendant maidens. The inside of the hog is washed with bay rum, and sweet majorum is put in. Then the hog is removed and cut up. The portions salted are salted for keeps, and the hams and bacon are smoked in a room filled with incense, and when the smoked meat comes out it is good enough for a king, or a queen, or a Milwaukee editor. Lie, indeed! We should like to see ourselves lying for one hog.

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 bald-headed 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 but 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 eight? You are silent, you cannot answer, enough?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "IT IS F-F-FOUR SIZES TOO B-B-BIG."]

They instinctively found their way to the sofa; mutual explanation 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.

THE BOY AND THE GOAT.

A man on King Street gave a boy a goat the other day, and he tied a rope around its neck to lead it home. The boy wanted to go through the gate, but as the goat concluded to jump over the fence and pull the boy through between the pickets, he let the goat have its own way. The boy got through the fence in instalments, leaving his s.h.i.+rt collar and one pants leg on the pickets, the goat dragged him out into the middle of the street, and then there occurred a sanguinary encounter to see whether the boy or the goat should boss the moving. At one time the spectators thought the goat would take the boy home. The animal used the boy for a cultivator, and they tore up the street like hands working on the road, till the goat slipped the rope over his head, and then the boy gathered himself up by the armful, and went and told his mother that he got his rope back anyway.

She combed him with a piece of barrel.

PECK'S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

HIS PA GETS MAD!

"I was down to the drug store this morning and saw your Ma buying a lot of court-plaster, enough to make a s.h.i.+rt I should think. What's she doing with so much court-plaster?" asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as he came in and pulled off his boots by the stove and emptied out a lot of snow that had collected as he walked through a drift, which melted and made a bad smell.

"O, I guess she was going to patch Pa up so he will hold water. Pa's temper got him into the worst muss you ever see, last night. If that museum was here now they would hire Pa and exhibit him as the tattooed man. I tell you, I have got too old to be mauled as though I was a kid, and any man who attacks me from this out, wants to have his peace made with the insurance companies, and know that his calling and election is sure, because I am a bad man and don't you forget it." And the boy pulled on his boots and looked so cross and desperate that the grocer-man asked him if he wouldn't try a little new cider.

"Good heavens!" said the grocery man, as the boy swallowed the cider, and his face resumed its natural look, and the piratical frown disappeared with the cider. "You have not stabbed your father have you? I have feared that one thing would bring on another, with you, and that you would yet be hung."

"Naw, I haven't stabbed him. It was another cat that stabbed him. You see, Pa wants me to do all the work around the house. The other day he bought a load of kindling wood, and told me to carry it into the bas.e.m.e.nt. I had not been educated up to kindling wood, and I didn't do it. When supper time came, and Pa found that I had not carried in the kindling wood, he had a hot box, and told me if that wood was not in when he came back from the lodge, that he would warm my jacket. Well, I tried to hire some one to carry it in, and got a man to promise to come in the morning and carry it in and take his pay in groceries, and I was going to buy the groceries here and have them charged to Pa. But that wouldn't help me out that night. I knew when Pa came home he would search for me. So I slept in the back hall on a cot. But I didn't want Pa to have all his trouble for nothing, so I borrowed an old torn cat that my chum's old maid aunt owns, and put the cat in my bed. I thought if Pa came into my room after me, and found that by his unkindness I had changed to a torn cat, he would be sorry. That is the biggest cat you ever see, and the worst fighter in our ward. It isn't afraid of anything, and can whip a New Foundland dog quicker than you could put sand in a barrel of sugar. Well, about eleven o'clock I heard Pa tumbing over the kindling wood, and I knew by the remark he made as the wood slid around under him, that there was going to be a cat fight real quick. He came up to Ma's room, and sounded Ma as to whether Hennery had retired to his virtuous couch. Pa is awful sarcastic when he tries to be. I could hear him take off his clothes, and hear him say, as he picked up a trunk strap, 'I guess I will go up to his room and watch the smile on his face, as he dreams of angels. I yearn to press him to my aching bosom.' I thought to myself, mebbe you won't yearn so much directly. He come up stairs, and I could hear him breathing hard. I looked around the corner and could see he just had on his s.h.i.+rt and pants, and his suspenders were hanging down, and his bald head shown like a calcium light just before it explodes. Pa went into my room, and up to the bed, and I could hear him say, 'Come out here and bring in that kindling wood or I will start a fire on your base burner with this strap.' And then there was a yowling such as I never heard before, and Pa said, 'Helen Blazes,' and the furniture in my room began to fall around and break. O, _my_! I think Pa took the torn cat right by the neck, the way he does me, and that left the cat's feet free to get in their work. By the way the cat squawled as though it was being choked I know Pa had him by the neck. I suppose the cat thought Pa was a whole flock of New Foundland dogs, and the cat had a record on dogs, and it kicked awful. Pa's s.h.i.+rt was no protection at all in a cat fight, and the cat just walked all around Pa's stomach, and Pa yelled 'police,' and 'fire,' and 'turn on the hose,' and he called Ma, and the cat yowled. If Pa had had presence of mind enough to have dropped the cat, or rolled it up in the mattra.s.s, it would have been all right, but a man always gets rattled in time of danger, and he held on to the cat and started down stairs yelling murder, and he met Ma coming up.

"I guess Ma's night cap or something frightened the cat more, cause he stabbed Ma on the night-s.h.i.+rt with one hind foot, and Ma said 'mercy on us,' and she went back, and Pa stumbled on a hand-sled that was on the stairs, and they all fell down, and the cat got away and went down in the coal bin and yowled all night. Pa and Ma went into their room, and I guess they annointed themselves with vasaline, and Pond's extract, and I went and got into my bed, cause it was cold out in the hall, and the cat had warmed my bed as well as it had warmed Pa. It was all I could do to go to sleep, with Pa and Ma talking all night, and this morning I came down the back stairs, and haven't been to breakfast, cause I don't want to see Pa when he is vexed. You let the man that carries in the kindling wood have six s.h.i.+llings worth of groceries, and charge them to Pa. I have pa.s.sed the kindling wood period in a boy's life, and have arrived at the coal period.

I will carry in coal, but I draw the line at kindling wood."

"Well, you are a cruel, bad boy," said the grocery man, as he went to the book and charged the six s.h.i.+llings.

"O, I don't know. I think Pa is cruel. A man who will take a poor kitty by the neck, that hasn't done any harm, and tries to chastise the poor thing with a trunk strap, ought to be looked after by the humane society. And if it is cruel to take a cat by the neck, how much more cruel is it to take a boy by the neck, that had diphtheria only a few years ago, and whose throat is tender? Say, I guess I will accept your invitation to take breakfast with you," and the boy cut off a piece of bologna and helped himself to the crackers, and while the grocery man was out shoveling off the snow from the sidewalk, the boy filled his pockets with raisins and loaf sugar, and then went out to watch the man carry in his kindling wood.

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 d.a.m.nable 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.

"CASH."

On circus day W.H.H. Cash, the great railroad monopolist of New Lisbon, was in the city. He had just made a few hundred thousand dollars on a railroad contract, and he decided to expend large sums of money in buying dry goods. He went into one of our stores and was pa.s.sing along up the floor, when a black-eyed girl with a dimple in her chin, pearly teeth, red pouting lips, who was behind the counter, shouted, "_cash, here!_" Mr.

Cash turned to her, a smile illuminating his face as big as a horse collar. He is one of the most modest men in the world, and as he extended his great big h.o.r.n.y hand to the girl, a blush covered his face, and the perspiration stood in great beads on his forehead. "How do yeu dew?" said Cash, as she seemed to shrink back in a frightened manner. They gazed at each other a moment, in astonishment, when another girl, perhaps a little better looking, further on, said, "Here, Cash, quick!" He at once made up his mind that she was the one that had spoken to him the first time, so he said, "Beg your pardon, miss," to the black-eyed girl, and went on to where the other girl was wrapping up a corset in a base ball unders.h.i.+rt.

As he approached her she smiled, supposing he wanted to buy something. He thought she knew him, and he sat down on a stool and put out his hand and said, "How have you been?" She didn't seem to shake very much, but asked him if there was anything she could show him. He thought may be it was against the rules for the clerks to speak to anybody, unless they were buying something, so he said, "Yes, of course. Show me corsets, stockings, anything, gaul dumbed if I care what." She was just beginning to look upon him as though she thought he had escaped, when a little blonde on the other side of the store, as sweet as honey, shouted, "Cash, Cash, I need thee every hour. Come a running." To say that Cash was astonished, is drawing it mild. He knew that they all wanted him, but he couldn't make out how they seemed to know his name. He looked at the little blonde a minute, trying to think where he had met her, when he decided to go over and ask her. On the way over he thought she resembled a girl that used to live in Portage. He went up to her, and with a smile that was childlike and bland, he said, "Why, how are you, Samantha?" The little blonde looked daggers at him. "Didn't you use to wait on tables there at the Fox House, at Portage?" The girl picked up a roll of paper cambric, and was about to brain him, when the floor walker came along, and asked what was the matter. Cash explained that since he came into the store, three or four girls had yelled to him, and he couldn't place them. "There," says he, as another girl yelled "Cash," "there's another of 'em wants me," and he was going to where she was, when the floor walker asked him if his name was Cash. "You bet your liver it is," said Cash. It was then explained to him that the girls were calling cash boys. He thought it over a minute and said, "Sold, by the great baldheaded Elijah. Won't you go down and take something? Invite all of them. The girls can take soda. I'll be gaul blasted if I ever had such a rig played on me." And he went out into the glare of the sunlight, with his hat pulled down over his eyes, and just then the circus procession came along, and he followed off the elephants.

There are lots of worse men than Cash.