Peck's Compendium of Fun Part 9

The minister finally got to the amen, and read a hymn, the choir then coughed and all rose up. The chair that the tenor sat in stuck to him like a brother, and came right along and nearly broke his suspenders.

It was the tenor to bat, and as the great organ struck up he pushed the chair, looked around to see if he had saved his pants, and began to sing, and the rest of the choir came near bursting. The tenor was called out on three strikes by the umpire, and the alto had to sail in, and while she was singing the tenor began to feel of first base to see what was the matter. When he got his hand on the shoemaker's warm wax his heart smote him, and he looked daggers at the soprano, but she put on a pious look and got her mouth ready to sing "Hold the Fort."

Well, the tenor sat down on a white handkerchief before he went home, and he got home without anybody seeing him, and he has been, as the old saying is, "laying" for the soprano ever since to get even.

It is customary in all first-cla.s.s choirs for the male singers to furnish candy for the lady singers, and the other day the tenor went to a candy factory and had a peppermint lozenger made with about half a teaspoonful of cayenne pepper in the centre of it. On Christmas he took his lozenger to church and concluded to get even with the soprano if he died for it.

Candy had been pa.s.sed around, and just before the hymn was given out in which the soprano was to sing a solo, "Nearer My G.o.d to Thee," the wicked wretch gave her the loaded lozenger. She put it in her mouth and nibbed off the edges, and was rolling it as a sweet morsel under her tongue, when the organ struck up and they all arose. While the choir was skirmis.h.i.+ng on the first part of the verse and getting scored up for the solo, she chewed what was left of the candy and swallowed it.

Well, if a democratic torch-light procession had marched unbidden down her throat she couldn't have been any more astonished. She leaned over to pick up her handkerchief and spit the candy out, but there was enough pepper left around the selvage of her mouth to have pickled a peck of chow-chow.

It was her turn to sing, and as she rose and took the book, her eyes filled with tears, her voice trembled, her face was as red as a spanked lobster, and the way she sung that old hymn was a caution. With a sweet tremulo she sung, "A Charge to Keep I Have," and the congregation was almost melted to tears.

As she stopped, while the organist got in a little work, she turned her head, opened her mouth and blew out her breath with a "whoosh,"

to cool her mouth. The audience saw her wipe a tear away, but did not hear the sound of her voice as she "whooshed." She wiped out some of the pepper with her handkerchief and sang the other verses with a good deal of fervor, and the choir sat down, all of the members looking at the soprano.

She called for water, the n.o.ble tenor went and got it for her, and after she had drank a couple of quarts, she whispered to him: "Young man, I will get even with you for that peppermint candy if I have to live a thousand years, and don't you forget it," and then they all sat down and looked pious, while the minister preached a most beautiful sermon on "Faith." We expect that tenor will be blowed through the roof some Sunday morning, and the congregation will wonder what he is in such a hurry for.

SUPREME COURT JUDGES AND U.S. SENATORS.

I would call your attention to a change that it seems to me should be made in the method of selecting U.S. Senators and Supreme Judges. Heretofore it has been noticeable that the men who carried the longest pole knocked down the senatorial persimmons. In the matter of the election of Judges of the Supreme Court, it has been the practice to secure men for those places at an enormous salary, when other men would be willing to do the work and board themselves. The suggestion I would make is that you pa.s.s a law letting the offices of United States Senator and Judges of the Supreme Court to the lowest bidder. This method will be economical and will secure to the state men who can legislate and judge things well enough for all practical purposes. The way times are now we must get things at panic prices or go without.

OUR CHRISTIAN NEIGHBORS HAVE GONE.

It pains us to announce that the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation, which has had rooms on two sides of our office for more than a year, has moved away. We do not know why they moved, as we have tried to do everything it was possible to do for their comfort, and to cheer them in their lonely life. That their proximity to the _Sun_ office has been beneficial to them we are a.s.sured, and the closeness has not done us any hurt as we know of.

Many times when something has happened that, had it happened in La Crosse, might have caused us to be semi-profane, instead of giving way to the fiery spirit within us, and whooping it up, we have thought of our neighbors who were truly good, and have turned the matter over to our business manager, who would do the subject justice or burst a flue.

When the young Christians have given a sociable, we have always put on a resigned and pious expression and gone amongst them about the time the good bald-headed brother brought up the pail full of coffee, and the cheerful sister cut the cake.

No one has been more punctual at these free feeds than we have, though we often noticed that we never got a fair divide of the cake that was left, when they were dividing it up to carry home for the poor. We have been as little annoyed by our neighbors as we could have been by anybody that might have occupied the rooms.

It is true that at times the singing of a church tune in there when we were writing a worldly editorial has caused us to get tangled, but the piety that we have smuggled into our readers through the church music will more than atone for the wrath we have felt at the discordant music, and we have hopes the good brothers will not be averse to saying a good word for us when they feel like it.

When we lent the young Christians our sanctum as a reception room for the ladies when they gave the winter picnic to the dry goods clerks, we _did_ feel a little hurt at finding so many different kinds of hair pins on the carpet the next morning, and the different colors of long hair on our plush chairs and raw silk ottoman would have been a dead give away on any other occasion, but for this, even, we have forgiven the young Christians, though if we ever do so again, they have got to agree to comb the lounge and the chairs before we shall ever occupy the rooms again.

There is nothing that is so hard to explain as a long hair of another color, or hair pins and blue bows and pieces of switch. They are gone and we miss them. No more shall we hear the young Christian slip on the golden stairs and roll down with his boot heel pointing heavenward, while the wail of a soul in anguish comes over the banisters, and the brother puts his hand on his pistol pocket and goes out the front door muttering a silent prayer, with blood in his eyes.

No more will the young Christian faint by the wayside as he brings back our borrowed chairs and finds a bottle and six gla.s.ses on our centre table, when he has been importuning us to deliver a temperance speech in his lecture room. Never again shall we witness the look of agony on the face of the good brother when we refuse to give five dollars toward helping discharged criminals to get a soft thing, while poor people who never committed a crime and have never been supported by the State are amongst us feeling the pangs of hunger. No more shall we be compelled to watch the hard looking citizens who frequent the reading room of the a.s.sociation for fear they will enter our office in the still watches of the night and sleep on the carpet with their boots on.

They are all gone. They have crossed the beautiful river, and have camped near the _Christian Statesman_ office, where all is pure and good except the houses over on Second street, beyond the livery stable, where they never will be molested if they do not go there.

Will they be treated any better in their new home than they have been with us? Will they have that confidence in their new neighbors that they have always seemed to have in us? Well, we hope they may be always happy, and continue to do good, and when they come to die and go to St. Peter's gate, if there is any backtalk, and they have any trouble about getting in, the good old doorkeeper is hereby a.s.sured that we will vouch for the true goodness and self-sacrificing devotion of the Milwaukee Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation, and he is asked to pa.s.s them in and charge it up to the _Sun_.

b.u.t.tERMILK BIBBERS.

The immense consumption of b.u.t.termilk as a drink, retailed over the bars of saloons, has caused temperance people to rejoice. It is said that over two thousand gallons a day are sold in Milwaukee. There is one thing about b.u.t.termilk, in its favor, and that is, it does not intoxicate, and it takes the place of liquor as a beverage. A man may drink a quart of b.u.t.termilk, and while he may feel like a calf that has been sucking, and want to stand in a fence corner and bleat, or kick up his heels and run around a pasture, he does not become intoxicated and throw a beer keg through a saloon window.

Another thing, b.u.t.termilk does not cause the nose to become red, and the consumer's breath does not smell like the next day after a sangerfest. The complexion of the nose of a b.u.t.termilk drinker a.s.sumes a pale hue which is enchanting, and while his breath may smell like a baby that has nursed too much and got sour, the smell does not debar his entrance to a temperance society.

FIs.h.i.+NG FOR PIECES OF WOMEN.

There are lots of ludicrous scenes to be observed on the railroads and conductors are loaded with stories that would cause a marble monument to keep its sides a laughing. Some day we are going to borrow a conductor, and take him out in the woods, and place a revolver to his head and make him deliver a lot of stories. The other day as conductor Fred Underwood's train from Chicago, arrived on the trestle work on the south side, the whistle blew, the air break was touched off, and the train came up standing so quick that a woman lost her false teeth in the sleeper, and everybody's hair stood up like a mule's ears. Every window had a head out, and when the conductor got out on the platform he saw the engineer and fireman on the ends of the ties looking down into the mud and water, shading their eyes as though looking for the eclipse.

There, sticking out of the mud were two human legs, and as one leg had a piece of listing around it, just above the veal, the conductor knew, instinctively, that the surface indications showed that there was a woman in there. Then he thought that the engine had probably struck a female, and tore her all to pieces, and of course he knew that the company would expect him to bring home enough for a mess, or a funeral. Spitting on his hands he called a brakeman with a transom hook out of the sleeper, to fish with, they rolled up their trousers and waded in, after telling a porter to bring a blanket to put the pieces in. The brakeman got there first and took hold of one foot, when the conductor got hold of the brakeman's coat tail and pulled. The pa.s.sengers turned away sick, expecting to see the mangled remains brought to the surface. They pulled, and directly the balance of the deceased came up. It was an Irish lady, with a tin pail, who had been on the way to take her husband's dinner to him, and she stood on one side to let the train pa.s.s, and had lost her balance and fallen into the mud. As her head came out of the mud, she squirted water out of her mouth, kicked the brakeman in the ear and said,

"Lave go of me, I am a dacent woman!"

The conductor asked her if she was hurt.

"Hurted is it," said she, "Ivery bone in my body is kilt intirely, and I have lost me tay cup," and she looked in her tin pail in distress.

After vainly trying to get the conductor to wade in and search for her "tay cup," she permitted them to a.s.sist her into the car, where an old doctor from Racine volunteered to examine her to see if she was mortally injured. He put his hand on her shoulder and asked her if she was in any pain.

"Divil the pain, except the loss of me tay cup," said she, "and kape yer owld hands off me, for I am a dacent woman."

She shook herself in the car and got mud all over everybody, and finally took her pail and jumped off at a crossing before arriving at the depot.

As the train came into the depot ten minutes late, and the conductor jumped off, all mud from head to foot, as though he had been playing spaniel and retrieving a wounded duck, Supt. Atkins looked at his clothes and said, "Where in ---- have you been all the time?" The conductor took a wisp of straw to wipe himself off, and as he threw it under a car he said he had been in the artificial propagation of the human race. In fact he had been engaged in the n.o.ble work of raising woman to a higher sphere. He was allowed to go on probation and wash himself. The brakeman went down there the next day and was fis.h.i.+ng in the same hole. He said he didn't know but there might be more woman in there, but they say he was after the "tay cup."

NEARLY BROKE UP THE BALL.

A party of well meaning young people from Ripon nearly broke up a dance at Hazen's cheese factory, out in the country a spell ago. The people around there are quiet, sober country people, who confine themselves in dancing, to plain quadrilles and country dances, with an occasional monnie musk, or a plain waltz. These young Ripon people are on the dance bigger than a wolf, and they have learned all the Boston dips, and Saratoga bends, and Newport colic dances, and everything new. There is one dance they have learned which is peculiar to say the least. It is a species of waltz, but the couple get together so odd that a person who sees it for the first time just leans against something and fans himself. When the music strikes up a waltz the young man opens his arms and doubles himself up like a boy with the cholera infantum, his hind leg cramps and his head lops over on one side, and he looks sick, his back humps up like a case of chronic inflammatory rheumatism, and he is ready. The girl who is with him, when he begins to have spasms, at once seems to go into a trance. Her back gets up like a cat, she bends over towards him, her forward leg gets out of joint at the knee, her neck takes a cramp, her mouth opens and she lolls, her eyes roll like a steer that has turned the yoke, and just before she dies she falls into the arms of the deceased and they are ready. For a moment they stand and squirm like angle-worms on a hook, and froth at the mouth, and look, as they stand there, like a pile driver that has been run into by an engine. They teeter up and down a little, and then fly off on a tangent, and they flop around in unexpected places among the other dancers, jump like a box car, b.u.mp against other couples, and at every b.u.mp they are driven closer together, until they are so near that it does seem as though they will have to be pried apart with a handspike; they look into each other's eyes as though they would bite, and they keep going around till their backs are broke. Well, a party of these kind of dancers went to the cheese factory where the country people were gathered, and after dancing a few quadrilles, the fiddlers struck up an old fas.h.i.+oned waltz. While the visiting dancers were going into spasms to get ready to wade in, the floor filled with the country couples, who were waltzing around old fas.h.i.+oned, when all of a sudden those Ripon people began to work. They flopped across the cheese factory, knocked down a couple from Pickett's Corners, caromed on a fellow and his girl from Brandon and sent them against a barrel of lemonade, glanced across the hall and struck an old lady amids.h.i.+ps that had just started to call her girl off the floor because she was afraid the girl would catch those Ripon cramps, knocked her under a bench, where she lay and called for her husband Isaiah, to come and pick her up in a basket. In less than two minutes all the other dancers hauled off, and stood on benches and looked at them. Some of the country girls hid their heads and said they wanted to go home. The visitors slid around the hall, caught each other on the fly, run the bases, and come under the wire neck and neck, just as the man who played second fiddle fell over the base viol in a dead faint, and the man that played the piccalo rolled under the music stand, striken with apoplexy. The manager of the dance called a constable who was present, and told him to arrest the party, and handcuff them and take them to the Oshkosh insane asylum, where they had escaped. The young men explained that they were not crazy, and that it was only a new kind of dance, and they were reluctantly allowed to remain, on condition that they "wouldn't cut up any more of them city monkey s.h.i.+nes, not afore folks."

SUMMER RESORTING.

The other day a business man who has one of the nicest houses in the nicest ward in the city, and who has horses and carriages in plenty, and who usually looks as clean as though just out of a band box and as happy as a schoolma'am at a vacation picnic, got on a street car near the depot, a picture of a total wreck. He had on a long linen duster, the collar tucked down under the neck band of his s.h.i.+rt, which had no collar on, his cuffs were sticking out of his coat pocket, his eyes looked heavy, and where the dirt had come off with the perspiration he looked pale and he was cross as a bear.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RESORTER.]

A friend who was on the car, on the way up town, after a day's work, with a clean s.h.i.+rt on, a white vest and a general look of coolness, accosted the traveler as follows:

"Been summer resorting, I hear?"

The dirty-looking man crossed his legs with a painful effort, as though his drawers stuck to his legs and almost peeled the back off, and answered:

"Yes, I have been out two weeks. I have struck ten different hotels, and if you ever hear of my leaving town again during the hot weather, you can take my head for a soft thing," and he wiped a cinder out of his eye with what was once a clean handkerchief.

"Had a good, cool time, I suppose, and enjoyed yourself," said the man who had not been out of town.

"Cool time, h.e.l.l," said the man, who has a pew in two churches, as he kicked his limp satchel of dirty clothes under the car seat. "I had rather been sentenced to the House of Correction for a month."

"Why, what's the trouble?"