Peck's Compendium of Fun Part 18

Mr. Pierce made one bound and reached the door, and then got behind a white greyhound and waited for her to go away, which she soon did. As she was stepping on the car the conductor, Jake Sazerowski, said to her:

"Your apparel, madame, seems to be demoralized," but she rushed into the car, and was seen no more.

Since then these gentlemen have all learned that the fas.h.i.+on calls for a red strip at the bottom of a dress, and they will make no more mistakes.

But they were all serious enough, and their interference was prompted by pure kindness of heart, and not from any wicked thoughts.

A NEW SPARKING SCHEME.

A number of fathers who have daughters, have formed a society, the object of which is to charge young men who visit the girls, for meals, gas, wear and tear of furniture, etc. There has been so much sparking going on which did not mean business, that the organization has seemed necessary.

EFFECTS OF MINERAL WATER.

A woman from Milwaukee, stopping at Sparta for the summer, had a serious accident the other day. She had her dress pinned back so tight that the exclamation point where she was vaccinated on the left arm was plainly visible, and as she stooped over at the artesian well to dip up a cup full of physic, a little dog belonging to a lady from Pilot k.n.o.b took hold of her striped stocking and shook it, thinking it was a blue racer. The lady was overcome with heat and sank down on the damp ground, and the result was congestion of the dog, for when she got up she kicked that dog over the Court house and sprained her stocking. It is said that beautiful and healthful summer resort is fast filling up and everybody swears it is the most enjoyable place on the continent. It is certainly the cheapest for us La Crosse folks to go. We don't know of a place where, for the money invested, one can have so much fun and get so much health. You can leave La Crosse at 5:45, and arrive at Sparta at 6:20, after a delightful ride of thirty miles, and you will enjoy a race, your train beating the Northwestern train, and running like lightning. If you have a pa.s.s, or sit on the hind platform, it will cost you nothing. You can walk down town, at small expense. You want to take supper before leaving home, if economy is what you are seeking in addition to health. Go to Condit, at the Warner House, and talk as though you were looking for a place to send your family, and he will hitch up and drive you all over town. Tell Doc.

Nichols you never tried a Turkish bath, but that you are troubled with hypochondria and often wish you were dead, and that if you were sure the baths would help you, you would come down and take them regular. He will put you through for nothing, and give you a cigar. Then you can get a tooth pick at Condit's and put your thumb under your vest and go to the springs and talk loud about railroad stocks and bonds and speculating in wheat. (It takes two to do it up right. Frank Hatch and the writer are going down some night to "do" the watering place). Then you can swell around till half past ten, and sneak off to the depot on foot and come home, and your pocket book will be just as empty as when you started, unless you get a subscriber, and you will have added bloom to your cheek, and had a high old time, and next winter you can talk about the delightful time you pa.s.sed at Sparta last summer during the heated term.

Let's get up a party and go down some night.

WHAT THE COUNTRY NEEDS.

What the country needs is a melon from which the incendiary ingredients have been removed. It seems to me that by proper care, when the melon is growing on the vines, the cholera morbus can be decreased, at least, the same as the cranberry has been improved, by cultivation. The experiment of planting homeopathic pills in the hill with the melon has been tried, but homeopathy, while perhaps good in certain cases, does not seem to reach the seat of disease in the watermelon. What I would advise, and the advice is free to all, is that a porous plaster be placed upon watermelons, just as they are begining to ripen, with a view to draw out the cholera morbus.

A mustard plaster might have the same effect, but the porous plaster seems to me to be the article to fill a want long felt. If, by this means, a breed of watermelon can be raised that will not strike terror to the heart of the consumer, this agricultural address will not have been delivered in vain.

THE MAN FROM DUBUQUE.

Last week, a young man from the country west of here came in on the evening train and walked up to Grand avenue, with a fresh looking young woman hanging on to one handle of a satchel while he held the other. They turned into the Plankinton House, and with a wild light in his eye the man went to the book and registered his name and that of the lady with him.

While the clerk was picking out a couple of rooms that were near together, the man looked around at the colored man who had the satchel, and as the clerk said, "Show the gentleman to No 65 and the lady to 67," he said, "Hold on, 'squire! One room will do."

On being shown to the room, the bridegroom came right out with the bell boy and appeared at the office. Picking out a benevolent looking gentleman, with a good place to raise hair on his head, who was behind the counter, the groom said:

"Say, can a man enjoy religion in this house?"

Mr. White said a man could if he brought it with him. They had none on hand to issue out to guests, but they never interfered with those who had it when they arrived.

"Why," says the manager of the house, "has anybody interfered with your devotions here?"

"No, not here," said the man, wiping his forehead with a red handkerchief.

"But they have at Dubuque. I'll tell you how it was. I was married a couple of days ago, and night before last I put up at a Dubuque hotel. My wife never had been married before any at all, and she is timid, and thinks everybody is watching us, and making fun of us! She jumps at the slightest sound.

"Well, we went to our room in the afternoon, and she began to cry, and said if she wasn't married she never would be the longest day she lived. I sort of put my arm around her, and was just telling her that everybody had to get married, when there was a knock on the door, and she jumped more than thirty feet.

"You see that finger. Well, a pin in her belt stuck clear through, and came near making me faint away. I held my finger in my mouth, and telling her the house was not on fire, I went to the door and there was a porter there who wanted to know if I wanted any more coal on the fire. I drove him away, and sat down in a big rocking chair with my wife in my lap, and was stroking her hair and telling her that if she would forgive me for marrying I never would do so again, and trying to make her feel more at home, when there came another knock at the door, and she jumped clear across the room and knocked over a water pitcher.

"This seal ring on my finger caught in her frizzes and I'll be cussed if the whole top of her head didn't come off. I was a little flurried and went to the door, and a chambermaid was there with an armful of towels and she handed me a couple and went off. My wife came into camp again, and began to cry and accuse me of pulling her hair, when I went up to her and put my arm around her waist, and was just going to kiss her, just as any man would be justified in kissing his wife under the circ.u.mstances, when she screamed murder and fell against the bureau.

"I looked around and the door had opened, and there was a colored man coming into the room with a kerosene lamp, and he chuckled and said he begged my pardon. Now, I am a man that don't let my temper get away with me, but as it was three hours before dark I didn't see what was the use of a lamp, and I told him to get out of there. Before 6 o'clock that evening there had been twenty raps at the door, and we got sick. My wife said she would not stay in that house for a million dollars. So we started for Milwaukee.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN INTRUSIVE n.i.g.g.e.r.]

"I tried to get a little sleep on the cars, but every little while a conductor would wake me up and roll me over in the seat to look at my ticket, and brakemen would run against my legs in the aisle of the car, and shout the names of stations till I was sorry I ever left home. Now, I want to have rest and quietude. Can I have it here?"

The manager told him to go to his room, and if he wanted any coal or ice water to ring for it, and if anybody knocked at his door without being sent for, to begin shooting bullets through the door. That settled it, and when the parties returned to Iowa they said this country was a mighty sight different from Dubuque.

A PLEA FOR THE BULL HEAD.

The late meeting of the State Fish Commissioners at Milwaukee was an important event, and the discussions the wise men indulged in will be valuable additions to the literature of the country, and future readers of profane history will rise up and call them blessed. It seems that the action of the Milwaukee common council in withdrawing the use of the water works from the commissioners, will put a stop to the hatching of whitefish. This is as it should be. The white fish is an aristocratic bird, that will not bite a hook, and the propagation of this species of fish is wholly in the interest of wealthy owners of fis.h.i.+ng tugs, who have nets. By strict attention to business they can catch all the whitefish out of the lake a little faster than the State machine can put them in. Poor people cannot get a smell of whitefish. The same may be said of brook trout. While they will bite a hook, it requires more machinery to catch them than ordinary people can possess without mortgaging a house. A man has got to have a morocco book of expensive flies, a fifteen dollar bamboo jointed rod, a three dollar trout basket with a hole mortised in the top, a corduroy suit made in the latest style, top boots of the Wellington pattern, with red ta.s.sels in the straps, and a flask of Otard brandy in a side pocket. Unless a man is got up in that style, a speckled trout will see him in Chicago, first, and then it won't bite. The brook trout is even more aristocratic than the whitefish, and should not be propagated at public expense.

But there are fish that should be propagated in the interest of the people. There is a species of fish that never looks at the clothes of the man who throws in the bait, a fish that takes whatever is thrown to it, and when once hold of the hook never tries to shake a friend, but submits to the inevitable, crosses its legs and says "Now I lay me," and comes out on the bank and seems to enjoy being taken. It is a fish that is a friend of the poor, and one that will sacrifice itself in the interest of humanity. This is the fish that the State should adopt as its trade mark, and cultivate friendly relations with, and stand by. We allude to the bullhead.

The bullhead never went back on a friend. To catch the bullhead it is not necessary to tempt his appet.i.te with porter house steak, or to display an expensive lot of fis.h.i.+ng tackle. A pin hook, a piece of liver, and a cistern pole, is all the capital required to catch a bullhead. He lays upon the bottom of a stream or pond in the mud, thinking. There is no fish that does more thinking or has a better head for grasping great questions, or chunks of liver than the bullhead. His brain is large, his heart beats for humanity, and if he can't get liver, a piece of a tin tomato can will make a meal for him. It is an interesting study to watch a boy catch a bullhead. The boy knows where the bullhead congregates, and when he throws in his hook it is dollars to b.u.t.tons that "in the near future" he will get a bite. The bullhead is democratic in all its instincts. If the boy's s.h.i.+rt is sleeveless, his hat crownless, and his pants a bottomless pit, the bullhead will bite just as well as though the boy is dressed in purple and fine linen, with knee breeches and plaid stockings. The bull head seems to be dozing--bulldozing we might say--on the muddy bottom, and a stranger might say that he would not bite. But wait. There is a movement of his continuation, and his cow-catcher moves gently toward the piece of liver. He does not wait to smell of it, and canvas in his mind whether the liver is fresh. It makes no difference to him. He argues that here is a family out of meat. "My country calls and I must go," says the bullhead to himself, and he opens his mouth and the liver disappears.

It is not certain that the boy will think of his bait for half an hour, but the bullhead is in no hurry. He lays in the mud and proceeds to digest the liver. He realizes that his days will not be long in the land, or water, more properly speaking, and he argues if he swallows the bait and digests it before the boy pulls him out, he will be just so much ahead. Finally the boy thinks of his bait, and pulls it out, and the bullhead is landed on the bank, and the boy cuts him open to get the hook out. Some fish only take the bait gingerly, and are only caught around the selvage of the mouth, and they are comparatively easy to dislodge. Not so with the bullhead. He says if liver is a good thing you can't have too much of it, and it tastes good all the way down. The boy gets down on his knees to dissect the bullhead, and get his hook, and it may be that the boy swears. It would not be astonis.h.i.+ng, though he must feel, when he gets his hook out of the hidden recesses of the bullhead, like the minister that took up a collection and didn't get a cent, though he expressed his thanks at getting his hat back. There is one drawback to the bullhead, and that is his horns. We doubt if a boy ever descended into the patent insides of a bullhead, to mine for Limerick hooks, that did not, before his work was done, run a horn into his vital parts. But the boy seems to expect it, and the bullhead enjoys it. We have seen a bullhead lay on the bank and become dry, and to all appearances dead to all that was going on, and when the boy sat down on him and got a horn in his elbow, and yelled murder, the bullhead would grin from ear to ear, and wag his tail as though applauding for an _end core_.

The bullhead never complains. We have seen a boy take a dull knife and proceed to follow a fish line down a bullhead from his head to the end of his subsequent anatomy, and all the time there would be an expression of sweet peace on the countenance of the bullhead, as though he enjoyed it. If we were preparing a picture representing "Resignation," for a chromo to give to subscribers, and wished to represent a scene of suffering in which the sufferer was light hearted, and seemed to recognize that all was for the best, we should take for the subject a bullhead, with a boy searching with a knife for a long lost fish hook.

The bullhead is a fish that has no scales, but in lieu thereof is a fine India rubber skin, that is as far ahead of fiddle string material for strength and durability as possible. The meat of the bullhead is not as choice as that of the mackerel, but it fills up a stomach just as well, and the _Sun_ insists that the fish commissioners shall drop the hatching of aristocratic fish and give the bullhead a chance. There's millions in it.

WHY NOT RAISE WOLVES?

You devote a good deal of time and labor to the raising of sheep, and what do you get for it. The best sheep cannot lay more than eight pounds of wool in a season, and even if you get fifty cents a pound for it, you have not got any great bonanza. Now, the state encourages the raising of wolves, by offering a bounty of ten dollars for a piece of skin off the head of each wolf. It does not cost any more to raise a wolf than it does to raise a sheep, and while sheep rarely raise more than two lambs a year, a pair of good wolves are liable to raise twenty young ones in the course of a year, if it is a good year for wolves. In addition to the encouragement offered by the state, many counties give as much more, so that one wolf scalp will bring more money than five sheep. You will readily see that our wise legislators are offering inducements to you that you should be thankful for. You can establish a wolf orchard on any farm, and with a pair of good wolves to start on, there is millions in it.

THE SUDDEN FIRE-WORKS AT RACINE.

One of those Fourth of July accidents that are always looked for but seldom occur, happened at Racine, Monday night, which struck terror to the hearts and other portions of the bodies of many eminent citizens, and that none were killed we can all thank Providence, who tempers the fire-works to the sweaty citizen in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves. The enterprizing citizens had contributed a large sum of money, which had been judiciously expended in all kinds of fire-works, and one side of the public square was given up to the display.

Thousands of citizens had gathered there, from city and country, and bright Roman candles shone o'er fair men and brave women, and sixteen thousand nine hundred and twelve hearts beat happy, while music arose with its voluptuous swell, and soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, or words to that effect. At least that was what a young fellow from Racine told us, who was here to see a specialist to have a splinter from a rocket stick removed from his ear.

A few pieces had been shot off, a few bunches of crackers had had their tails tied together and been hung over a wire clothes line, like cats, to fight it out, and the crowd was holding its breath for the next boom, when there was an explosion; the earth seemed to tremble, and the air was full of all kinds of fire-works. The whole supply of fire-works had become ignited, and were blowing off where they listeth, without regard to anybody's feelings.

The crowd became panic stricken, and there never was another such a scene, and never will be until the last great day, when a few thousand people suddenly find that they have got into h.e.l.l, by mistake, when they thought they were ticketed through to the other place. It was perfectly awful.

Prominent citizens who usually display great pluck, became fearfully rattled.

A man named Martindale, a railroad man who weighs over two hundred pounds, was standing near a telegraph pole, and as the firing commenced he climbed up the pole as easy as a squirrel would climb a tree, and when it was over they had to get a fire ladder to get him down; as his pants had got caught over the gla.s.s telegraph k.n.o.b, and he had forgotten the combination, and besides he said he didn't want to take off his clothes up there and come down, even if it _was_ dark, because it would be just his luck to have some one fire off a Roman candle when he got down.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARTINDALE CLIMBS A POLE.]

The Hon. Norton J. Field was another man who lost his nerve. He was explaining to some ladies one of the pieces that was to be fired off, which was an allegorical picture representing the revolution, when the whole business blew up. He thought at the time, that the explosion was in the programme, and was just rea.s.suring the ladies, by telling them it reminded him of battle scenes he had witnessed when he was on the military committee in the a.s.sembly, when he noticed a girl near him whose polonaise had caught fire, and he rushed up to her, caught her by the dress, intending, with his cool hands, to put out the fire.

The girl felt some one feeling, as she supposed, for her pocket-book, and she started to run, yelling, "pickpocket," and left the burning polonaise in Mr. Field's hands. He blushed, and was about to explain to his lady friends how the best of us are liable to have our motives misconstrued, when somebody threw a box of four dozen of those large firecrackers right at his feet, and they were all on fire. Ten of them exploded at once, and he grabbed the polonaise in one hand and his burning coat tail in the other, and started west on a run.

The steward of the Gideon's Band Club House, at Burlington, said he arrived there at daylight on the morning of the 5th, and he still held the pieces of dress, but the whole back of his coat was burned off, and the suspenders just held by a thread. He said the comet struck the earth at Racine, at 9:30 the night before, and knocked the town into the lake, and he and another fellow were all that escaped.