Peck's Sunshine Part 9

They all looked at Hoyt, and the conductor went up to him and asked him if he didn't know any bettor than to be carrying around such cheese as that?

Hoyt said he hadn't got no cheese.

The conductor insisted that he had, and told him to turn his pockets wrong side out.

Hoyt jabbed his hands into his pockets, and felt something cold and clammy. He drew his hands out empty, turned pale, and said he didn't have any cheese.

The conductor insisted on his feeling again, and he brought to the surface a couple of human ears, a finger, and a thumb.

"What in the name of the Apostles have you got there?" says the conductor. "Do you belong to any canning establishment that sends canned missionary to the heathen cannibals?"

Hoyt told the conductor to come in the baggage car, and he would explain all; and as he pa.s.sed by the pa.s.sengers, with both hands full of the remains, the pa.s.sengers were ready to lynch Hoyt. He told the conductor where he had been, and the boys had played it on him, and the fingers and things were thrown beside the track, where some one will find them and think a murder has been committed.

Afterwards Hoyt went into the car and tried to apologize to the old maid, but she said if he didn't go away from her she would scream. Hoyt would always rather go away than have a woman scream.

He is trying to think of some way to get even with the boys of Rush Medical College.

CHANGED SATCHELS.

There was one of those old fas.h.i.+oned mistakes occurred on the train from Monroe to Janesville a week or so ago. A traveling man and a girl who was going to Milton College sat in adjoining seats, and their satchels were exactly alike, and the traveling man took the wrong satchel and got off at Janesville, and the girl went on to Milton.

The drummer went down to Vankirk's grocery and put his satchel on the counter, and asked Van how his liver was getting along, while he picked a piece off a codfish and ate it, and then smelled of his fingers and said "Whew!" Van said his liver was "not very torpid, thank you; how are you fixed for tea?" The drummer said he wished he had as many dollars as he was fixed for tea, and began to open his sample case. Van cut off a piece of cheese and was eating it while he walked along towards the drummer.

When the case was opened the drummer fell over against a barrel of brooms, and grasping a keg of maple syrup for support, turned pale and said he'd be dashed. Van looked in the sample case, and said, "Fixed for tea! I should think you was, but it wasn't that kind of tea I want."

There was a long female night-s.h.i.+rt, clapboarded up in front with tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and starch, and b.u.t.toned from Genesis to Revelations. Van took a b.u.t.ter tryer and lifted it out, and there was more than a peck measure full of stuff that never belonged in no grocery. Van said: "If you are traveling for a millinery house I will send a boy to direct you to a millinery store."

The drummer wiped the perspiration from his face with a coffee sack and told Van he would give him a million dollars if he never would let the house in Milwaukee know about it, and he chucked the things back in.

"What is this?" said Van, as he held up a pair of giddy looking affairs that no drummer ever wore on his own person. "Don't ask _me_" says the drummer, "I am not a married man."

He took the satchel and went to Milton on the next train. The girl had opened the satchel which fell to her in the division to show her room-mate how to make a st.i.tch in crochet, and when the brown sugar, coffee, tea, rice, bottles of syrup, maccaroni and a pack of cards came in sight, she fairly squealed. Along after dinner the drummer called and asked for an exchange, and they exchanged, and it was hard to tell which blushed the most.

THE NAUGHTY BUT NICE CHURCH CHOIR.

You may organize a church choir and think you have got it down fine, and that every member of it is pious and full of true goodness, and in such a moment as you think not you will find that one or more of them are full of the old Harry, and it will break out when you least expect it.

There is no more beautiful sight to the student of nature than a church choir. To see the members sitting together, demure, devoted and pious looking, you think that there is never a thought enters their mind that is not connected with singing anthems, but sometimes you get left.

There is one church choir in Milwaukee that is about as near perfect as a choir can be. It has been organized for a long time, and has never quarreled, and the congregation swears by it. When the choir strikes a devotional att.i.tude it is enough to make an ordinary christian think of the angel band above, only the male singers wear whiskers, and the females wear fas.h.i.+onable clothes.

You would not think that this choir played tricks on each other during the sermon, but sometimes they do. The choir is furnished with the numbers of the hymns that are to be sung, by the minister, and they put a book mark in the book at the proper place. One morning they all got up to sing, when the soprano turned pale as an ace of spades dropped out of her hymn book, the alto nearly fainted when a queen of hearts dropped at her feet, and the rest of the pack was distributed around in the other books. They laid it onto the tenor, but he swore, while the minister was preaching, that he didn't know one card from another.

One morning last summer, after the tenor had been playing tricks all Spring on the rest of the choir, the soprano brought a chunk of shoemaker's wax to church. The tenor was arrayed like Solomon, in all his glory, with white pants, and a Seymour coat. The tenor got up to see who the girl was who came in with the old lady, and while he was up the soprano put the shoemakers' wax on the chair, and the tenor sat down on it. They all saw it, and they waited for the result. It was an awful long prayer, and the church was hot, the tenor was no iceberg himself, and shoemakers' wax melts at ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit.

The minister finally got to the amen, and read a hymn, the choir coughed and all rose up. The chair that the tenor was 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 off of his person, 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.

SENSE IN LITTLE BUGS.

There is a c.o.c.kroach that makes his home on our desk that has got more sense than a delinquent subscriber. He--if it is a he one; we are not clear as to that--comes out and sits on the side, of the paste-dish, and draws in a long breath. If the paste is fresh he eats it, and wiggles his polonaise as much as to thank us, and goes away refreshed. If the paste is sour, and smells bad, he looks at us with a mournful expression, and goes away looking as though it was a mighty mean trick to play on a c.o.c.kroach, and he runs about as though he was offended.

When a package of wedding cake is placed on the desk he is the first one to find it out, and he sits and waits till we cut the string, when he goes into it and walks all over the cake till he strikes the bridal cake, when he gets onto it, stands on his head and seems to say, "Yum, yum," and is tickled as a girl with a fresh beau.

There is human nature in a c.o.c.kroach. When a man comes in and sits around with no business, on our busy day, and asks questions, and stays and keeps us from working, the c.o.c.kroach will come out and sit on the inkstand and look across at the visitor as much as to say:

"Why don't you go away about your business and leave the poor man alone, so he can get out some copy, and not keep us all standing around here doing nothing?"

But when the paper is out, and there is a look of cheerfulness about the place, and we are anxious to have friends call, the c.o.c.kroach flies around over the papers and welcomes each caller as pleasantly as he can, and seems to enjoy it.

One day the paste smelled pretty bad, and we poured about a spoonful of whisky in it, and stirred it up. The c.o.c.kroach came out to breakfast, and we never saw a person that seemed to enjoy the meal any more than the c.o.c.kroach did. It seemed as though he couldn't get enough paste.

Pretty soon he put one hand to his head and looked crosseyed. He tried to climb down off the paste-dish, and fell over himself and turned a flip-flap on the blotting paper. Then he looked at us in a sort of mysterious way, winked one eye as much as to say: "You think you are smart, don't you, old baldy?"

Then he put one hand to his forehead as if in meditation, and staggered off into a drawer, coming out presently with his arm around another c.o.c.kroach, and he took him to the paste-pot, and _he_ filled up, too, and then they locked arms and paraded up and down on the green cloth of the desk, as though singing, "We won't go home till morning," and they kicked over the steel pens, and acted a good deal like politicians after a caucus.

Finally, some remark was made by one of them that didn't suit, and they pitched in and had the worst fight that ever was, after which one rushed off as if after a policeman, and the other, staggered into his hole, and we saw no more of our c.o.c.kroach till the next morning, when he came out with one hand on his head and the other on his stomach, and after smelling of the paste and looking sick, he walked off to a bottle of seltzer water and crawled up to the cork and looked around with an expression so human that we uncorked the bottle and let him in, and he drank as though he had been eating codfish. Since that day he looks at us a little suspicious, and when the paste smells a little peculiar he goes and gets another c.o.c.kroach to eat some of it first, and he watches the effect.

Now, you wouldn't believe it, but that c.o.c.kroach can tell, the minute he sees a man, whether the man has come in with a bill, or has come in to pay money. We don't know how he does it, but when a man has a bill the c.o.c.kroach begins to look solemn and mournful, and puts his hands to his eyes as though weeping. If a man comes in to pay money, the c.o.c.kroach looks glad, a smile plays around his mouth, and he acts kitteny. He acts the most human when ladies come into the office. If a book agent comes in, he makes no attempt to show his disgust.

One day an old person came in with a life of Garfield and laid it on the table, opened to the picture of the candidate, and left it. The c.o.c.kroach walked through the violet ink and got his feet all covered, and then he walked all over that book, and left his mark. The woman saw the tracks, and thought we had signed our name, and she said she was sorry we had written our signature there, because she had another book for subscribers' names.

When a handsome lady comes in, the c.o.c.kroach is in his element, and there is a good deal of proud flesh about him. He puts his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest and walks around.

One day we put our face up to a deaf young lady to speak to her, and the c.o.c.kroach looked straight the other way, and seemed to be looking over an old copy of the _Christian Statesman_; but when he found we only yelled at the lady, he winked as much as to say:

"Well, how did I know?"

O, that c.o.c.kroach is a thoroughbred!