GEORGE W. PECK.
A common-sized-mustache-and-goatee young man is George W. Peck, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is rather a handsome chap, and just after he has left the barber’s chair he looks for all the world like a military officer. However, he looks like a common citizen when Saturday night comes around, and he has not been shaved for several days. Peck has attained quite a reputation as a humorist, through the columns of his paper, Peck’s Sun. Though only established, as a weekly journal with a humorous foundation, something over two years, the Sun has already a circulation of twenty thousand copies, and is rapidly increasing.
George W. Peck is a ready writer, and takes more to the narrative style than paragraphing. His paper is well liked among his fellow humorists, and is widely quoted. Peck is still a comparatively young man, and is “fair, fat, andthirty.” He is one of the few newspaper men who are bashful by nature, as the following letter plainly shows:
“I do not believe the time has arrived when the American people are consumed with a desire to know where I was born, how old I am, or any of the particulars of an uneventful life. If I should ever become of so much importance, which is hardly liable to be the case, while you and I live, I will resurrect the necessary data from the orphan asylum, the reform farm, the State prison, and other places of that kind, too numerous to mention. At the present time I think it is a charity to spare the people. Whatever you do, please do not call me funny. If you do, it is very evident that you do not know me.“Yours truly,George W. Peck.”
“I do not believe the time has arrived when the American people are consumed with a desire to know where I was born, how old I am, or any of the particulars of an uneventful life. If I should ever become of so much importance, which is hardly liable to be the case, while you and I live, I will resurrect the necessary data from the orphan asylum, the reform farm, the State prison, and other places of that kind, too numerous to mention. At the present time I think it is a charity to spare the people. Whatever you do, please do not call me funny. If you do, it is very evident that you do not know me.
“Yours truly,
George W. Peck.”
Here is one of Mr. Peck’s recent paragraphs:
“Those who take the Sun take it for the fun there is in it, and we feel a confounded sight funnier if we are making something than if we are losing. We are too old to work for glory, and too lazy to work for fun.”
“Those who take the Sun take it for the fun there is in it, and we feel a confounded sight funnier if we are making something than if we are losing. We are too old to work for glory, and too lazy to work for fun.”
In a recent article in the Sun, Mr. Peck discourses as follows on the
PECULIARITIES OF THEATRICAL SUPES.About the most laughable thing around a theatre is the “supes.” However funny a play may be, the actions of the supes are funnierthan the comedians. Men may act as supes for twenty years, and they can never come on the stage without appearing awkward and falling all over themselves. The actors tell them where to stand, and they get into another place. They act as if they expected to be stabbed and they cannot appear natural to save them. Take a far western scene, where they want a lot of miners in a bar-room to take a drink. One would think fellows who are in bar-rooms a dozen times a day would know how to act, but they don’t. They all go up to the bar in a crowd, and fall around, and then take tin cups of alleged whiskey and stare at vacancy until told to sit down, and then they all try to sit down on the same chair. When they are wanted for a scene in the Roman forum, they get on the red night-gowns and walk around toeing in, and walking knock-kneed, making the sickest lot of Roman citizens that ever robbed a hen roost. It is a singular coincidence that a supe always has a black patch on the seat of a pair of gray pants. Where in the world they all get gray pants, and why they don’t have gray patches on them, is more than anybody can find out. Let a couple of supes come on the stage to remove a table, and they will have those patches dead sure, and they will arrange to stand with the patches to the audience. They probably reason that theirfaces are liable to betray emotion, or that they may blush, but that the patches can maintain a stern and dignified demeanor under the most trying circumstances of guying and cat-calls on the part of the gallery boys. Female supes are even worse than men in stubbing their toes on the carpet, or backing against the wings. They are hired to come on to fill up a scene at half a dollar a night, and they usually wear octagon shaped tights, with more bran than legs, and it is painful to see them stand around. But they get confidence in themselves quicker than men, and they want to star after appearing one or two times. The supe business has lots of fun in it.
PECULIARITIES OF THEATRICAL SUPES.
About the most laughable thing around a theatre is the “supes.” However funny a play may be, the actions of the supes are funnierthan the comedians. Men may act as supes for twenty years, and they can never come on the stage without appearing awkward and falling all over themselves. The actors tell them where to stand, and they get into another place. They act as if they expected to be stabbed and they cannot appear natural to save them. Take a far western scene, where they want a lot of miners in a bar-room to take a drink. One would think fellows who are in bar-rooms a dozen times a day would know how to act, but they don’t. They all go up to the bar in a crowd, and fall around, and then take tin cups of alleged whiskey and stare at vacancy until told to sit down, and then they all try to sit down on the same chair. When they are wanted for a scene in the Roman forum, they get on the red night-gowns and walk around toeing in, and walking knock-kneed, making the sickest lot of Roman citizens that ever robbed a hen roost. It is a singular coincidence that a supe always has a black patch on the seat of a pair of gray pants. Where in the world they all get gray pants, and why they don’t have gray patches on them, is more than anybody can find out. Let a couple of supes come on the stage to remove a table, and they will have those patches dead sure, and they will arrange to stand with the patches to the audience. They probably reason that theirfaces are liable to betray emotion, or that they may blush, but that the patches can maintain a stern and dignified demeanor under the most trying circumstances of guying and cat-calls on the part of the gallery boys. Female supes are even worse than men in stubbing their toes on the carpet, or backing against the wings. They are hired to come on to fill up a scene at half a dollar a night, and they usually wear octagon shaped tights, with more bran than legs, and it is painful to see them stand around. But they get confidence in themselves quicker than men, and they want to star after appearing one or two times. The supe business has lots of fun in it.