Peck's Compendium of Fun Part 17

These tongs are connected with the air brakes, in such a manner that by the engineer's touching a spring the whole force of the compressed air takes possession of the tongs, and the pa.s.senger is s.n.a.t.c.hed bald-headed, metaphorically speaking. For instance, a pa.s.senger gets on the platform at Portage, and the ice tongs grasp him or her securely. If he or she pays the fare, the door is opened, the tongs release their hold, and the person is allowed to enter. But if the engineer should find that they had no money, or that their pa.s.s had run out, and they were trying to beat their way, he would pull the string and they would be lifted back on the depot steps and stood on their heads, raised in the air and made to see stars. Col. Johnson has been offered a fabulous sum for his patent, but he has not decided whether to sell or lease it. A trial trip was made at Milwaukee, the other day, and though the machine was not perfect, the experiment was not altogether a failure. A car was arranged with the apparatus, and went out to the Soldier's Home. Col. Johnson and a number of prominent railroad men were on board. They got a veteran soldier and a Polack waman to allow the machine to experiment on them. The machine took hold of the soldier and the engineer jerked. The man had one leg torn off, and the seat of his overcoat was ruined. He wouldn't try again, so they let the woman step on the platform. The engineer turned it the wrong way, and the car seemed full of compressed air, and a smell of limberger cheese pervaded the premises. When the smoke cleared off the woman was not to be found. After voting the machine a success the party started for Milwaukee.

On nearing the city a pair of wooden shoes were seen in the air coming down, and they lit in the the ca.n.a.l by the tannery. A pair of corsets struck on Plankinton's packing house, and sections of spinal cord, and one leg of a pair of red drawers came down on the Soldier's home, and hair was found on the top of the car. It is thought the engineer loaded the air bouncer too heavy, and that it kicked. However, Col. Johnson was not discouraged, and will soon have his patent on all cars. The husband of the Polack woman wanted Johnson to pay him three dollars, but he said he didn't want to buy the woman. All he wanted was to hire her, anyway. Col.

Johnson is a great inventor. It was he that invented the stomach pump, and the automatic candle enunciator, for awakening guests in the night to take early trains. The latter he sold to Mr. Williams, of Prairie du Chien, for a large amount and took his pay in trade.

RAISING ELEPHANTS.

Why not go to raising elephants? A good elephant will sell for eight thousand dollars. A pair of elephants can be bought by a community of farmers pooling their issues and getting a start, and in a few years every farm can be a menagerie of it own, and every year we can rake in from eight to twenty-four thousand dollars from the sale of surplus elephants.

It may be said that elephants are hearty feeders, and that they would go through an ordinary farmer in a short time. Well, they can be turned out into the highway to browse, and earn their own living. This elephant theory is a good one, and any man that is good on figures can sit down and figure up a profit in a year sufficient to go into bankruptcy.

THE POWER OF ELOQUENCE.

A justice of the peace at Menasha, wanted to kill Pratt, the editor of the _Press_. The matter has been compromised, however. Pratt got the justice cornered up, and delivered one of the speeches to him that he delivered during the campaign last fall, and the justice got on his knees and said, "Pratt, this thing is all right, I surrender."

A TRYING SITUATION.

It was along in the winter, and the prominent church members were having a business meeting in the bas.e.m.e.nt 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WANDERING OYSTER.]

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 sh.e.l.l 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 toward 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 slikery 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 GIDDY GIRLS QUARREL.

A dispatch from Brooklyn states that at the conclusion of a performance at the theatre, f.a.n.n.y Davenport's wardrobe was attached by Anna d.i.c.kinson and the remark is made that f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y 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 d.i.c.kinson has done very wrong. She has struck f.a.n.n.y in a vital part.

An actress with a wardrobe is one of the n.o.blest works of nature. She is the next thing to an honest man, which is the n.o.blest 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 d.i.c.kinson going to do with f.a.n.n.y's wardrobe? She may think f.a.n.n.y's talent goes with it, but if she will carefully search the pockets she will find that f.a.n.n.y retains her talent, and has probably hid it under a bushel, or an umbrella, or something, before this time. Anna cannot wear f.a.n.n.y's wardrobe to play on the stage, because she is not bigger than a banana, while f.a.n.n.y 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.

f.a.n.n.y's dress, accustomed to so much talent, would have to be stuffed full of stuff. There would be room enough in f.a.n.n.y'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 cus.h.i.+ons, two dozen towels, two bra.s.s 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 f.a.n.n.y'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 d.i.c.kinson 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.

f.a.n.n.y Davenport is one of the handsomest and splendidest formed women on the American stage, and a perfect lady, while d.i.c.kinson, 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 f.a.n.n.y Davenport without any wardrobe to speak of than to see d.i.c.kinson with clothes enough to start a second hand store.

THE UNIVERSAL OBJECT.

The object that every man has in view, whether he be farmer, mechanic, preacher, editor, or tramp, is to make money.

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 ill.u.s.trated at Watertown last week. People have no doubt noticed that one of the late fas.h.i.+ons 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 fas.h.i.+ons 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 embarra.s.s 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 gla.s.ses, 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 a.s.serted 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MYSTERY OF A WOMAN'S CLOTHES!]

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 expressman 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, c.o.c.ked 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."