Peck's Compendium of Fun Part 13

"Here, now. You don't know your business, Mr. Drayman. You roll them apples into the cellar, or I won't accept them."

The senator was by this time as mad as senators usually get. He jumped off the dray, threw the two barrels of apples on, and drove off, saying he didn't care a continental dam if the minister eat dried apples all winter.

And he took them back to his store, and it is safe to say that he will not give many more apples to that minister.

MORAL:--Never despise a man because he wears a ragged coat, for he may be a senatorial granger angel in the disguise of a drayman. And you may have to fill up on turnips instead of apples.

ONE OF BEECHER'S CONVERTS.

Since Beecher, the great revivalist, was here, and spoke so eloquently on the fall of man, and the need of making arrangements for the future, I have become a changed man. It hurts me to lie now, and when anything hurts, then I quit. It is wrong to lie, and a man who follows it up will come to some bad end.

BUYING A STONE CRUSHER.

The proceedings of the council of the city of Milwaukee shows that the aldermen are about to buy a stone crusher, to be run by steam, for the purpose of crus.h.i.+ng stones to be used on the streets. If the city has never indulged in the luxury of a stone crusher, it should interview some city that has owned one, before it closes a contract with any party that wants to sell one. Every party that owns one does want to sell it.

Statistics show that. The first city in Wisconsin that bought one was Madison. The city owned it for a year or two, and after that no man that was in the council when it was bought could ever get in it again. The mayor that winked at the purchase of the stone crusher was defeated, and there was trouble. No person would ever say what was the matter, but you say "stone crusher" to a citizen of Madison, and he would reach his right hand around to his pistol pocket, and the conversation would cease.

La Crosse heard that Madison had a stone crusher, and so she wanted one.

La Crosse is bound to have anything that any other town has, whether it is a railroad, an insane asylum, or a speckled hen. La Crosse could have bought Madison's stone crusher at a discount, but she wanted one new, with the paint all on, fresh. Second-hand stone crusher? Not any for La Crosse.

So the city ordered a brand new one, right from the mint, at an expense of about $5,000.

The idea was that it would be about as big as a straw cutter, or a job press, and people were anxious to see it work.

Finally the city was notified that one train of cars loaded with the stone crusher had arrived, with red flags on, betokening extra trains running wild behind, and the city was told to come down to the depot and pay the first installment of freight, and take the stone crusher away--that part of it that had arrived. The aldermen went down and took an inventory of the hardware, and some of them went and jumped in the river.

At a cent a pound one can buy a good deal of cast iron for five thousand dollars. The city bonded itself, and paid the freight, and during the spring all of the trains loaded with the stone crusher arrived. It was argued that the only way to get the stone crusher up to the city building would be to give the railroad the right of way up town, right through Main street.

Some were in favor of letting the railroad company keep it for freight, but the company threatened to get out an injunction on the city. Finally a man who took contracts to move brick buildings agreed to move it up town on shares, and during the summer the most of it was got up there and corded up on some vacant lots. If all the cast iron in it came out of one mine it must have been an immense mine. People would look at it and weep.

Every alderman swore he voted against buying it. Occasionally some one in the council would suggest that the stone crusher be taken out to the bluffs, a couple of miles, and set to work, when another one would move, to amend by inserting a clause that the bluffs be moved into the city to be crushed, as it would save expense. Then the matter would drop. For three years that stone crusher stood there, and it never crushed a pebble.

New mayors and aldermen were elected, and every day they pa.s.sed that crusher, but they never spoke to it. Finally a job was put up to get rid of it. There was a man there who owned a stone quarry, and it occurred to somebody to sell it to him. He was a truly good man, and did not believe there were any bad men in the world, who would kanoodle him with a stone crusher. A committee was appointed to sell it to him. The committee was composed of men who had traded horses, sold lightning rods, and been insurance agents, and when they told the poor man that the city had noticed that he was a deserving man, that they had decided to help him along, and would sell him that stone crusher, and he could pay for it in crushed stone, and the city would pay him in cash half a dollar more than the stone was worth, he said he would take it. They got it on to him by buying crushed stone of him and paying cash for it.

We have never heard whether the man lived or not, and have never heard whether the city bought any stone of him, but the city got rid of it, and then had a celebration. Why, they figured it up, and the thing could crush enough stone in twenty-four hours to pave the streets a foot thick all over town and thirteen miles in the country. To run it a week would bankrupt the State of Wisconsin, It could go up to the stone quarry and tunnel a hole right through the hill. It was the biggest elephant that ever a city drew in a legalized lottery. Milwaukee will make money if she does not buy a stone crusher, not as long as it can buy stone in the rough, and have it crushed by tramps, at nothing a day.

MERRIE CHRISTMAS.

What proportion of the people who wish each other merry Christmas, do you suppose think of the reason that the day is a holiday? Not one in a thousand. Do the young fellows who put on a clean s.h.i.+rt and go down town and play pool all day, and drink yellow stuff out of a shaving cup, and get chalk on their fingers, and eat liver sausage, think that Christ died to save them? No! All they think of is the prospect of sticking some other fellow for the game. Do the hundreds of thousands of people who get up a big feed, and gormandize, think of Christ, or the poor all about them who have little to eat to-day, and little prospect of more to eat to-morrow?

Many of them do not think of the poor, or of anything else except to prospect upon how much they will hold and not get sick.

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 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 hea.r.s.e. 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 someone that knows them. The young man picks up the lines, and the horses are in the air, and as they pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 the 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.

BASE INGRAt.i.tUDE.

I remember once of offering a lady from Eau Claire a slice of bread and a half of a red onion in a railroad car. She looked hungry, and yet she said she didn't care to eat. Thinking she had a delicacy about accepting food at the hands of one who was almost a stranger to her, I turned the bread and onion into her lap, and said she was entirely welcome to it. What did she do? Instead of eating it, and thanking me, she threw it out of the window, and went and sat by the stove. I was never so offended in my life.

That woman may see the time she will want that onion, and I would see her almost perish of starvation before she could have any more of my onion.

THE DIFFERENCE.

One of the great female writers on dress reform, in trying to ill.u.s.trate 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 s.h.i.+lling 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 meningitis; put on an unders.h.i.+rt 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 s.h.i.+rt between the two others, and rub on some liniment, and put a bunch of keys and a jack-knife and a b.u.t.ton 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 whiskey c.o.c.ktails, 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?

THOSE STEP LADDERS!

There has got to be a law pa.s.sed to punish the hardware dealers for selling those step ladders that shut up like a jack-knife. A Ninth Street woman got onto one the other afternoon when it looked as though there was going to be a frost, to take her ivies down and carry them in the house.

We don't care how handsome a woman is naturally, you put a towel around her head and put her up on a step ladder about seven feet high, with a tomahawk in her left hand, trying to draw a big nail out of a post on a veranda, and she looks like thunder. This woman did. Her husband tried to get her to let him do the work, but she said a man never knew how to do anything, anyway. So he sat down on the steps to see how it would turn out. She said afterwards that he kicked the ladder, but however that may be, there was an earthquake, and when he looked up the air was filled with calico, toweling, striped stockings, polonaise, trailing arbutus, red petticoats, store hair and step ladder. He said the step ladder struck the veranda last, but as he picked her off of it, it seemed as though it must have lit first. He said the step ladder must have kicked up. In coming down she run one leg through the baby wagon, and the other through some flower pots, and a boy who was pa.s.sing along said he guess she had been to the turning school.

WONDERS OF THE STAGE.

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEHIND THE SCENES.]

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.