Peck's Sunshine Part 14

"I wilt ": and then he said to her quietly:

"Damfino what it is that smells so!"

They went on with the play between sneezes, and when the curtain went down she told Ingomar to go out and shake himself, which he did.

It was noticed in the next act that Ingomar had a linen duster on, and Mary snoze no more.

There was another mean trick played on a comedian a short time ago. In one of the plays he comes into a room as a tramp, and asks for something to drink. There is nothing to drink, and he asks if he may drink the kerosene in the lamp, which is on the table unlighted. The lamp has been filled with beer, and when he is told that he can slake his thirst at the lamp, he unscrews the top, takes out the wick, and drinks the contents. Everybody laughs, and the idea is a good one.

At Chicago, recently, some friend took out the beer and filled the lamp with a liquid of the same color, but the most sickish tasting stuff that ever was. The comedian drank about three swallows of the neatsfoot oil before he got onto the joke, and then he flew around like a dog that had been poisoned, and went off the stage saying something like "Noo Yoick."

He has agreed to kill the fellow that loaded that lamp for him.

ALL ABOUT A SANDWICH.

The time for getting to the Michigan Central depot at Chicago was so limited that no regularly prepared supper could be secured, and so it was necessary to take a sandwich at the central depot. There has been great improvement made in the sandwiches furnished in Chicago, in the last ten years. In 1870 it was customary to encase the sandwiches in pressed sole leather. The leather was prepared by a process only known to a Prussian, and the bread and ham were put in by hydraulic pressure, and the hole soldered up.

About four years ago, the Prussian who had the secret said something unkind to a pitcher of a baseball club, and the pitcher took up one of the sandwiches and pitched it curved at the Prussian's eye. His funeral was quite largely attended, considering that he was a man who was retiring, and who made few acquaintances; but the secret of making the soles and uppers of railroad sandwiches died with him.

It was about this time that corrugated iron shutters were invented, and that material was at once utilized to make lids for sandwiches, while the under jaw of the appet.i.te-destroying substance was made of common building paper, the whole-varnished with neats foot oil, and kiln dried in a lime kiln.

Our object in eating one of the sandwiches, was to transfer, if possible, the headache to the stomach, on the principle that the quack doctor cured a patient of paralysis by throwing him into fits, claiming that he was not much on paralysis, but he was h.e.l.l on fits. The entrance of the piece of sandwich into the stomach--that is, the small pieces that we were able to blast off with the imperfect appliances at hand in the tool box of a wrecking car--was signaled by the worst rebellion that has been witnessed in this country since 1860. The stomach, liver, lungs, spleen and other patent insides got up an indignation meeting, with the stomach in the chair. In calling the meeting to order the stomach said unaccustumed as it was to public speaking, it felt as though the occasion demanded a protest, and that in no uncertain tone, against the habit the boss had of slinging anything into the stomach that came in his way, without stopping to consider the effect on the internals.

The chair remarked that it had heretofore had a good many hard doses to take, notably, army bacon, and later some black bread that the boss had shoved in while hunting out in Minnesota in 1876, and again last year when a pan full of beans from Bill Wall's Wolf river boom boarding house was sent down without any introduction, the stomach said it had felt like throwing up the "sponge," and drawing out of the game, but it had thought better of it, and had gone on trying to digest things till now.

But this last outrage, this Chicago sandwich, was too much.

"See here," says the stomach, holding up a piece of the iron lid of the sandwich so the liver could see it, "what kind of a junk shop does he take this place for?"

The liver got the floor and suggested that the stomach was making a terrible fuss about a little thing, and told the stomach it had evidently forgotten the good things that had been sent down from above in times gone by.

"You seem to forget," says the liver, becoming warmed up, "the banquets the boss never fails to attend, the nice dinners he sometimes gets at home, and the wild canvas-back duck he sends down when he goes to Lake Koshkonong, as well as the Palmer House dinners that occasionally surprise us. I move that the stomach be reprimanded for kicking and trying to get up a muss, and that this meeting adjourn and we all go about our business."

The stomach tried to get in a word edgewise, but it was of no use, and the thing was about to break up in a row, when we went to sleep in one of the elegant Michigan Central sleepers, and in the morning the stomach was coaxing for something more, and didn't seem to care what it was.

No young man should ever take two girls to a picnic. We don't care how attractive the girls are, or how enterprising a boy is, or how expansive or far-reaching a mind he has, he cannot do justice to the subject if he has two girls. There will be a clashing of interests that no young boy in his goslinghood, as most boys are when they take two girls to a picnic, has the diplomacy to prevent.

If we start the youth of the land out right in the first place, they will be all right, but if they start out by taking two girls to a picnic their whole lives are liable to become acidulated, and they will grow up hating themselves.

If a young man is good natured and tries to do the fair thing, and a picnic is got up, there is always some old back number of a girl who has no fellow who wants to go, and the boys, after they all get girls and buggies engaged, will canva.s.s among themselves to see who will take this extra girl, and it always falls to this good natured young man. He says of course there is room for three in the buggy.

Sometimes he thinks maybe this old girl can be utilized to drive the horse, and then he can converse with his own sweet girl with both hands, but in such a moment as ye think not he finds that the extra girl is afraid of horses, dare not drive, and really requires some holding to keep her nerves quiet. He tries to drive with one hand and console his good girl, who is a little cross at the turn affairs have taken, with the other, but it is a failure, and finally his good girl says she will drive, and then he has to put an arm around them both, which gives more or less dissatisfaction the best way you can fix it.

If we had a boy who didn't seem to have any more sense than to make a hat rack of himself to hang girls on in a buggy, we should labor with him and tell him of the agonies we had experienced in youth when the boys palmed off two girls on us to take to a country picnic, and we believe we can do no greater favor to the young men just entering the picnic of life than to impress upon them the importance of doing one thing at a time, and doing it well.

A young couple from Green county stopped at a Janesville hotel on their wedding tour, and when they went to bed they were in a hurry and blew out the gas instead of turning it off. In the night a terrible smell was heard around the house, and suspicion naturally pointed to the bridal chamber. The door was pounded on but there was no response, and the people feared the young folks had gone to heaven, so the door was broken down. They had not gone to heaven, but they were both senseless, and were dragged out into the open air, with little ceremony and less clothes. They were brought out of the stupor, when they looked at each other in a reproachful manner, and as they pulled on their clothes they each acted as though if they had known the horrors of married life they would have remained single all their lives.

GOODWILL AND COMPa.s.sION.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, who has charge of the fund that is being distributed to certain portions of Ireland's suffering poor, has issued a circular pitching into Parnell and others for claiming that she is acting in the interest of the English landlords. She closes her circular as follows:

There is nothing that strikes me with more admiration than the generosity of the British nation. I have innumerable letters, all expressing good will and compa.s.sion for the calamities which a series of bad seasons have brought to the west of Ireland.

To the family that is suffering for the necessaries of life, that would look upon a large sized potato as a bonanza, there is nothing that is pleasanter than to read a letter from an Englishman expressing compa.s.sion. How it tones up the stomach to read of the good will that, by a large majority, occupies the heart of the Briton who writes the letter to the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough.

You take two plates, and put on one of them the letters expressing good will and compa.s.sion, and on the other plate you put some of the food sent by Americans, and offer the two plates to an Irish mother whose famishing children are tugging at her scanty skirts, and let her take her choice. How her trembling hand would clutch the plate containing the letters of compa.s.sion. Eh? She wouldn't take that plate, do you say? She would take the plate with the good, honest, star-spangled food on it, eh? O, you are mistaken. There is so much sustenance and warmth in a letter of compa.s.sion, that the famine stricken person would no doubt take it and make soup of it.

But if you think she wouldn't we won't argue the case. However, you will admit that the Irish are very queer, and if they went back on their English benefactors and took the rebellious American food, they would be guilty of treason, of course you will. We are not astonished that there is nothing that Strikes the d.u.c.h.ess with more admiration than the generosity of the British nation. It is the most remarkable thing we ever heard of.

THE FEMALE BURGLAR.

Every day we see that some new avenue has been opened to women, by which they can earn a livelihood. We see by the papers that a woman in Cleveland has been arrested as a burglar. We have no objections to female pickpockets, for if a man must have his pockets picked, it will be much more enjoyable to feel the delicate hand of a beautiful woman fluttering around his pockets than a rough male hand.

Many a man who would object to having his pockets picked by a man, would be willing to lose ten or fifteen dollars just to have a female pickpocket go through him.

There is a field open for women as confidence men. To have a female confidence game played on a man would leave less of a sting than to be bilked by a male. But, as burglars, the idea seems revolting. To think of women going about nights with a jimmy and a dark lantern, and opening doors, or windows, and sneaking about rooms, is degrading. If a male burglar gets in your house, and he is discovered, you can shoot him, if you get the drop on him, or kick him down stairs; but who wants to shoot a female burglar, or kick her over the banisters? It would be unnatural.

You would almost rather let her go ahead and burgle, and let her go away with your money, than to shoot her.

Besides, you could not hit her with a bullet from an ordinary pistol in a vital part. The heart and other vital organs are covered with bullet-proof corsets, liver and lung pads and porous plasters. You take a corset and tie it around a sack of flour, and try to fire a bullet through it, and you will find that the bullet will fall to the ground.

Try to fire a ball through a bed quilt, and you will discover that the ball becomes wound and twisted in the cotton batting, from the rifling of the barrel of the pistol, and stops as it goes through.

A liver pad is as good as boiler iron to protect the form, so you see there is no place to shoot a female burglar, except in the head and legs. No gentleman would want to shoot a beautiful woman in the face, and with a long dress on he might as well shut his eyes and shoot at a hop-yard, and expect to hit a pole, as to expect to hit a woman's leg.

So it is seen plainly that a female burglar would be perfectly safe from a pistol shot.

Then, again, the natural gallantry of a man would prevent his making much of a fuss if he found a female burglar in his house. If the average man--and most men are average men--should wake up in the night and see a woman burglar feeling in his pants, rifling the pockets, or rummaging in the drawers of the bureau, he would lay still and let her burgle, as long as she would keep still and not wake up his wife. Were it a male burglar, he would jump up, regardless of his nocturnal costume, and tell him to get out of there, but he would hesitate to get up before a female burglar. He would not feel like accosting the female burglar without an introduction. If he spoke to her familiarly, she would be justified in being indignant, and saying, "Sir, I do not remember that we have ever met before," and very likely she would turn her back on him, and say she was insulted.

It places a man of gallantry in a very embarra.s.sing situation to have a female burglar rob his house because he would be no gentleman if he did not offer to see her safe home. No true gentleman would like to see a female burglar go home alone at three or four o'clock in the morning, and while he might feel the loss of his property, it would be courtesy for him to offer to see her home, and help carry the swag.

If women become burglars, there is going to be more or less annoyance.

THE GIRL THAT WAS HUGGED TO DEATH.