An Oshkosh young man started for a picnic in a buggy with two girls, and when they got half way they got a hot box to the hind wheel of the buggy, and they remained there all the afternoon pouring water on the wheel, missing the picnic. There is nothing that will cause a hot box in a buggy so quick as going to a picnic with girls. Particularly is this the case when one has two girls. No young man should ever take two girls to a picnic. He may think one cannot have too much of a good thing, and that he holds over the most of the boys who have only one girl, but before the picnic is over he will note the look of satisfaction on the faces of the other boys as they stray off in the vernal shade, and he will look around at his two girls as though his stomach was overloaded. We don't care how attractive the girls are, or how enterprising a boy he 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 certain 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. Now, this may seem a trifling thing to write about and for a great pious paper to publish, but there is more at the bottom of it than is generally believed. 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, the rest of the boys are liable to play it on him. 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 canvass among themselves to see who shall take this extra girl, and it always falls to the good-natured young man. He says of course there is room for three in the buggy. Sometimes he thinks may be 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 out that the extra girl is afraid of horses, dare not drive, and really requires some holding to keep her nerves quiet. The young man begins to realize by this time that life is one great disappointment. He tries to drive with one hand hand, and consoles 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 will give more or less dissatisfaction, the best way you can fix it. If we had a boy that 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 who are just entering the picnic of life than to impress upon them the importance of doing one thing at a time, and doing it well. Start right at first, and life will be one continued picnic buggy ride, but if your mind is divided in youth you will always be looking for hot boxes and annoyance.
A few months ago the spectacle presented itself of a very respectable lady of the Seventh Ward, wearing a black eye. There never was a case of ante-election that was any more perfect than the one this lady carried.
We have seen millions of black eyes in our time, some of which were observed in a mirror, but we never saw one that suggested a row any plainer than the one the Seventh Ward lady wore. It was cut biased, that being the latest style of black eye, and was fluted with purple and orange shade, and trimmed with the same. Probably we never should have known about the black eye had not the lady asked, as she held her hand over one eye, if there was any truth in the story that a raw oyster would cure a black eye. She came to us as an expert. When we told her that a piece of beefsteak was worth two oysters she uncovered the eye.
It looked as though painted by one of the old masters.
Rather than have anybody think she had been having a row she explained how it happened. She was sitting with her husband and little girl in the parlor, and while the two were reading, the little one disappeared. The mother went to the girl's room, on tip-toe, to see if she was asleep. She found the girl with all her dolls on the floor, having a doll's prayer meeting. She had them all down on their knees, and would let them pray one at a time, then sing. One of the dolls that squeaked when pressed on the stomach was leader of the singing, and the little girl bossed the job. There was one old maid doll that the little girl seemed to be disgusted with because the doll talked too much, and she would say:
“There, Miss, you sit down and let some of the other sisters get in a word edgeways. Sister Perkins, won't you relate your experience?”
After listening to this for a few moments the mother heard the girl say:
“Now, Polly, you pass the collection plate, and nobody must put in lozengers, and then we will all go to the dancing school.”
The whole thing was so ridiculous that the mother attempted to rush down stairs three at a time, to have her husband come up to prayer meeting, when she stubbed herself on a stair rod, and—well, she got the black eye on the journey down stairs, though what hit her she will probably never know. But she said when she began to roll down stairs she felt in her innermost soul as though she had broke up that prayer meeting prematurely.
There is nothing in the world that is so beautiful as to see a sporting man, one who loves to shoot the wild prairie chicken and chase the bounding duck over the plains, have a respect for the Sabbath day. There are too many of our sporting friends who, if they are out for a week's shooting, forget that they should lay away the deadly breech loader on Sunday, after oiling it, and busy themselves reading good books, or loading cartridges.
However, we are proud to number among our acquaintances one sporting gentleman who would sooner cut a dog in two than to hunt on Sunday. It is related of him that on one occasion while in camp in a deer country, that his hounds got after a buck one Sunday morning, and that our friend was so incensed at the dogs that he seized his gun and shot one of the dogs dead, besides wounding the deer, and that he had to follow the deer over four miles before he could overtake the animal and put it out of its misery.
A wicked companion said that he shot at the deer and killed the dog accidentally, but those who know Mr. Van Brunt would not believe the story for a moment. Not long since this gentleman left his home at Horicon and went to Owatonna, Minn., for a few weeks' hunt. He hunted a good deal in town, and became somewhat acquainted with the fair sex as well as the chickens and other ducks of the prairies. However, Sunday came, and while the other wretches went out snooting on Sunday, our friend hied himself to the Sabbath school. His presence was observed by a teacher, and he, by the way, observedherpresence, and being a stranger and a pious looking man, she invited him to help her teach her class. He accepted, and seated beside the fair teacher, he chipped in an occasional remark to the class, while he looked into the soulful, pious eyes of the handsome teacher. She introduced him to the superintendent as a pious young man from Wisconsin, and the superintendent invited him to address the school.
It was new business to our friend, but he said he never had anything sawed off onto him unless he stood it like a man, so he got up, with the girl's eyes on him, and told the children the beautiful story of the cross, and how Samson went up in a chariot of fire, and Adam was found in the bullrushes by a Sunday school teacher, while he was shooting blue wing teal, and how Noah and Sat Clark built an ark and coasted around Uoricon lake and landed on Iron Ridge and sent out a canvas-back duck to see if there was any living thing this side of Schleisingerville, and how the duck came back with a sprig of wild celery in its bill which it had found at Lake Koshkonong.
He told how the locusts came down on the democratic party and lected Garfield, and counseled the children to be good and they would have a soft thing. He said evil communications corrupted two of a kind, and they could not be too careful with their pennies, and advised them to give up the soul destroying habit of buying taffy, and try and lead a different life, and put their money into the missionary box, where the wicked cease from troubling, and give us a rest.
He would have gone on all the afternoon, only the superintendent of the Sunday school told the children that the exercises would close with “Little Drops of Water,” and our friend sat down and wiped the perspiration from his brow.
The teacher said that his words had opened new beauties to her in the Scriptures, though he was a little off on some of his statistics. He told her, by way of apology, that she couldn't expect much religion from a man that came from so strong a democratic county as Dodge county. This may be all a lie, but if it is, we got it from one of the best liars of the State.
When Mr. and Mrs. Hayes returned to Washington from the far west their Ohio friends got up a surprise party for them. They had just retired for the night, rather early on account of fatigue, when the door bell rung violently. Mr. Hayes put on his pants, and throwing one suspender over his shoulder and holding on to it with his hands, he went to the door and asked who was there. On being answered that John Sherman was there, Mr. Hayes supposed there was something important, and he opened the door.
Mr. Sherman came in with a market basket of sandwiches, followed by about a hundred ladies and gentlemen, loaded down with articles usually taken to surprise parties. Mr. Hayes was taken entirely by surprise, and as he buttoned his trousers and tucked in his night shirt behind he said he hoped they would excuse him for a moment till he went up stairs and put on a collar and some stockings, and called Mrs. Hayes, who was in bed.
Matt Carpenter said never mind; he would call Mrs. Hayes, and he gave a hop, skip and jump and went up stairs three at a time, followed by Mr. Hayes, who was shivering from the contact of his bare feet with the oil cloth in the hall.
“What is the trouble, Rutherford?” said Mrs. Hayes, as Mr. Carpenter rushed into the room.
“Get up and dress yourself, you are surrounded, and escape is impossible.”
Mrs. Hayes screamed as she saw the bold buccaneer, pulled the bed clothes over her head and said, “We are lost.”
At this point Hayes, who had got on a pair of woolen stockings, and was buttoning on a paper collar, said: “I say, Matt, of course this is all right, and I don't want you to be offended, but won't you just step out into the hall so Mrs. Hayes can get her clothes on.”
“Why, to be sure,” said Matt, as he got up out of a rocking chair, on which there were three skirts, a red petticoat, an emancipation corset, and a pair of striped stockings with long suspenders arranged to button on the waist, “of course I will go out, but you need not mind me. I am near sighted.”
Matt went down stairs with the crowd, and when he was gone Mrs. Hayes got her head out from under the clothes and wanted to know what the trouble was, and if they could not fly.
Hayes told her not to be alarmed, as it was only one of those d—d surprise parties. He said there were two hundred hungry people down stairs, with baskets of sandwiches and pickles, and the chances were that they would eat up everything there was in the house, and mash crumbs and cold tongue into the carpet.
Mrs. Hayes got up and sent Rutherford into the linen closet after a clean white skirt, and he returned with a night gown and had to be sent back. While she was taking her hair down out of the curl papers, and putting bandoline over her ears, she gave Mr. Hayes her opinion of surprise parties. She said that little shrimp, Alexander Stephens, would sit on the piano keys, and knock his boot heels against the piano case, and that Dave Davis would fall over the music rack, and sit down in her best rocking chair and break it.
Just then she touched her nose with a curling iron that she had heated in a gas jet, and screamed and woke Mr. Hayes up, and he wanted to know what was the matter. She rolled over in bed, felt of her nose to see if it was there, and told Mr. Hayes she had been dreaming there was a surprise party came to the house.
He said: “My dear, I trust there is no such fate in store for us. You are nervous. Try a little of that crab apple cider, and lay on your face, and see if you can't go to sleep.”
There is something about the practice of “practical joking” that is mighty pleasant and enjoyable, if the joke is on somebody else. It was about six years ago that we quit practical joking, and the reason was that the boys played one on us that fairly broke our back. We had always been full of it, and an opportunity to play a joke on a friend was a picnic for us, but this time we had all the tuck taken out and fairly unraveled.
A party consisting of Hogan, Hatch, Root, Wood and Webb had been down from La Crosse to the marshes shooting ducks for a week. We had prepared to break camp and take the train to Brownsville at 2 o'clock, from which we took a little steamer for La Crosse.
We were out shooting and did not get to camp until everything was packed up, and just had time to catch the train with our hunting clothes on. The rest of the fellows had been in camp an hour, and had put on their good clothes, and washed up and looked like gentlemen, as they were, while we looked like a tramp, which we were not. All got on the little steamboat, and hugged around the boiler with the other passengers, for it was a cold night.
We felt a little ashamed of the old hunting clothes that had been worn so many years, and were covered with blood and dirt, but there was no chance to change, and we sat down with the boys. Finally Root, who was the biggest hector in the world, and a fine looking gentleman, turned to the captain of the boat and said, pointing to us:
“I wish, captain, you would ask this red-headed muskrat trapper to sit on the other side of me. He smells bad.”
If lightning had struck us we could not have been more astonished. The passengers all looked at the dirty looking “muskrat trapper,” and stuck up their noses. The captain asked us in a polite manner if we would not please move and get on the “lee side” of the passengers. He said he didn't mean any offence, but the smell of muskrats oftentimes made people sick.
Well, it was a pretty tight fix, but we forced a laugh and looked around at the rest of the boys in a familiar way, and began talking to them. Not a man of them would recognize us. The captain turned to Hogan and said, “Is this a friend of yours?” Hogan put on a look of disgust, and said he had never seen us before. “However,” says Jim, “he may be a very deserving person of his class.”
The captain said we had better go to the other end of the boiler and lay down with the dogs where it was warm. We tried to pass it off as a joke, and turned to Hatch and tried to get into conversation with him about a goose he had killed the day before, but he wouldn't have it. He said we could get the smell out of our clothes by burying them, and then he went on to tell how he shot a skunk once, and spoiled a suit of clothes.
We spoke to Colonel Wood, one of our party, as a last resort, and all he said was to draw in his breath with a “Whoosh,” and put his handkerchief to his nose. We never felt so mean in the world. The whole gang had combined against us, and we got up to leave them, meditating revenge, when Walt Webb said, “Let's throw the cuss overboard.” We went and laid down on the valises, and tried to think of some way to get even with the boys, when Root told the captain that they had got some valuables in those valises, and they didn't want any tramp laying down on them, and he came along and actually drove us off of our own valise. 4
To make the matter still worse, a homely looking Norwegian dog that we had borrowed to take on the hunt, and which was the worst looking brute that ever was, and which had been the laughing stock of the camp for a week, at this point came up to us, wagged his tail and followed us, and the boys said, “Look at the dog the muskrat trapper owns.” That was the worst give away.
We walked around on deck, and would occasionally stop and speak to one of the boys, hoping they had given us enough and would relent, but all the way to La Crosse not one of them would speak to us, and when the boat arrived at the landing Root handed us a quarter, in the presence of the passengers, and asked if we wouldn't help Mike Doyle, the cook, carry the baggage ashore.
It was the worst joke we ever had perpetrated on us, and even after we got ashore, and Hatch said, “Come, old sorrel top, let's go and get a glass of beer,” we could hardly smile. Since then when we go hunting we wear the best clothes we have got.
For years afterwards when fellows were joking, some of the party would ask us “if the trapping was good this season.” We got so we could not look a myskrat in the face. So we say that practical joking is splendid if it is on the other fellow. Always quit when they get it on to you.
There was probably the most astonished temperance man up above Stevens Point the other day that ever was. The name of the temperance man is Sutherland.
He is a nice gentleman, but, like many another man, he can never see a person with his keg full of bug juice without giving him a talking to.
The other day Sutherland was driving along the road when he overtook an Indian who asked for a ride. He was allowed to get in the wagon, when Sutherland discovered that the Indian had a breath that would stop a temperance clock. He smelled like a sidewalk in front of a wholesale liquor store. The Indian was comfortably full, so full that his back teeth were floating.
Sutherland thought it was a good time to get in his work, so he began talking to the Indian about the wickedness of looking upon the whisky when it was bay, and when it giveth its color in the nose. He told the Indian of the wrecked homes, the poverty, the disgrace and death that followed the use of liquor, and wound up by pleading with him to give up his cups and join the angel band and shout hosannas in a temperance lodge. The Indian did not understand a word that Suthland was saying, but supposing by the looks of his nose and pleading eyes that he wanted a drink, the Indian drew a large black bottle from under his blanket and handed it to Sutherland, remarking: “Ugh! Dam firewater.”
Sutherland thought that he had made a convert, and telling the Indian that he was glad he had resolved to lead a different life, took the bottle and dashed it upon the ground, smashing it into a thousand pieces.
Well, the air seemed full of Indians. If Sutherland had torn out the Indian's heart he could not have hurt the red man worse.
With a war whoop the Indian jumped on the seat, took Sutherland by the hair and yanked him out on the ground. Sutherland yelled and the Indian galloped over him. The team ran away, and the Indian mauled Sutherland. He cut open his face, italicised his nose, put a roof over his eye and felt for his knife to stab him.
Sutherland got away and run to Stevens Point, where his wounds were bound up. He says if any gentleman wants to take the job of reforming Indians he will give up his situation. He meant well, but lacked judgment.
An item in the La CrosseChroniclesays: “Two cats and a dog were killed at the high school yesterday for inspection by the class in physiology.”
In preparing the youth of the land for a business career there is nothing that tends more to ripen the mind and to prepare it for overcoming the obstacles that will naturally be found in after life than to learn to cut a dog in two.
The ignorance of some of the business men of the present day is largely to be attributed to the fact that the instructors of the youth in the olden time never taught them how to carve a dog. How many times have we been in positions since arriving at man's estate, when poring over some great problem of science, where we would have given ten years of the front end of our life if we knew how to make both ends meat, even if it was dog meat?
The knowledge that the students of the present day obtain in their study of the dog will be valuable to them if ever they are caught in a melon patch, and a dog fastens his teeth into their garments. They will know how to go to work scientifically to unhinge the jaws of a dog, instead of pulling one way, while the dog pulls the other, until the cloth or the skin tears out.
It will be a great thing to know all about how a dog is put together. And if these students are taught how to kill cats they will more than get their money back when they grow up.
Ignorant people who have never had the advantages of studying the cat when it is dead, attempt to kill them with boot-jacks and empty ale bottles and tomato cans, but the next generation will know how to do it scientifically, and not hurt the cat.
This is certainly an age of improvement, and theSundesires that school children shall know all about the anatomy of the festive dog and the nocturnal cat, if they don't even know how to spell their own names.
The newspaper correspondents about the White House, echoing the remarks made by the doctors, are continually talking of Mrs. Garfield's bravery, and we frequently see the statement made that she is “the bravest woman in the world,” and all that. While expressing great admiration for the gifted lady, in the trying ordeal through which she has passed, and admitting that she is brave as an American woman ought to be, and that by her conduct she greatly braced up her beloved husband when his liver was knocked around into the small of his back by the assassin's bullet, and he didn't know whether he was going to live till morning, we must say that Mrs. Garfield is no braver than thousands of other good women.
She simply took the chances on his dying, as thousands of other wives do every day, and for his good she put on the best face possible, and kept her tears back. But how many obscure women have done the same thing, as they sat by the side of their dying husbands, and made the patient believe that he was getting better, and smiled while their hearts were breaking? Was Mrs. Garfield braver than the sister of charity, God bless her, who goes from the North to nurse total strangers in a stricken southern city, when she knows that within a week the deadly fever will kill her?
Compare the President's wife for a moment with the wife of a drunken husband, who points a revolver at her heart, and his nervous finger on the trigger, while he announces that he will kill her. The wife looks him in the eye and says, “Kill me, John, but kiss me first,” and the drunken brute breaks down and cries, and she takes the revolver from him, puts him to bed, soaks his feet and brings him a good supper. That is bravery.
Think of a frail little woman whose life has been one bed of thorns, and whose happy hours have been so few that if an hour seems to open to her with happiness she dare not enjoy it for fear there is a mistake, and it is not hers to enjoy. In the wreck of her life's ambitions and hopes she has saved only a dear little girl and her heart is so bound up in her that it ceases to beat when she thinks that God may forget that the little one is all she has, and call her home.
One day the little one comes home with fever, takes to her bed, and for weeks is just on the line between earth and heaven. The little mother, hardly able to be upon her feet, believes as firmly as she believes that she lives, that her darling will die, and that two hearts will be buried in the coffin, and yet she watches beside her night and day with smiles on her face, sings to her as though her heart were filled with happiness, and occasionally gives expression to a jolly laugh, just to brace up her little darling, and make her believe there is no danger, and when the doctor says “she will live,” the brave little mother goes to her room and cries for the first time, and faints away.
Ah, gentlemen correspondents, you do well to speak of the bravery of the President's wife, but you know that these incidents we have related, and incidents you have seen in your own experiences, show as great, if not greater bravery and heroism than that of the first woman of the land. O, the country is full of women who are braver than the bravest man that ever walked.
It is singular how a great calamity like the attempted assassination of the President will bring people together on terms of familiarity, and cause them to discuss things that they never knew anything about before. People who never thought of such things before, except during the cucumber season, have become familiar with their livers and internal improvements, and talk as glibly of the abdomen, the umbilicus—as well as the cuss who shot him—the peritonitis, the colon, the ilium, the diaphragm, the alacumbumbletop and the diaphaneous cholagogue as though they had been attending a Chicago meat cutting match at a students' dissecting room. Men talk of little else, and this is noticeable more particularly among men who have nothing to do.
There were two old men who loaf a good deal around a grocery, discussing the wound of the President, and one was trying to illustrate to the other how it was. He put on his glasses and took up a butter tryer and walked up to a lady customer who was leaning over the counter smelling of some boarding-house prunes. She was a large lady, and perhaps as good a subject as could have been found. The first old man called the other up behind the woman, and said:
“There, the assassin stood about as you do, and looked, probably, the same as you do. Now, you take this spigot and point to the woman, about here—” and he put the butter tryer on her back, near the belt.
“Yes, I see,” said the second old man, as he nibbled a piece off a soda cracker, and pointed the wooden spigot at the woman, with his finger on the trigger. The woman was busy looking to see if there were any worms in the prunes, and she didn't notice what was going on.
“There,” said the first old man, as he pushed the end of the butter tryer a little harder against the woman. “The bullet went in here, and went around here close to the liver, though probably it didn't touch the liver, passed through the thin membrane, and is probably lodged in here,” and he reached around the woman with his left hand to where her apron was tied on. “Now, if they cannot extract the ball the great danger is from peritonitis—”
At this point the woman observed what was going on, and she was about as mad as a woman can be. Seizing a codfish that was on the head of a sugar barrel by the tail she whacked the first old gent, who held the butter tryer, over the head, and said:
“Peritonitis is beginning to set in, you bald-headed old villain, and general prostration will be the result. I will teach you to put your arm around me. I am no manikin. Do you take me for a dissecting room? Put down that gun, you idiot,” said she, as she wafted the codfish toward the second old man, who still held up the spigot.
The grocery man, who was cutting a cheese, came around the counter with the cheese knife in his hand, and said he hoped there would be no more bloodshed, and asked the old man to put down the butter tryer and go out. The two old men went out on the sidewalk, when the woman told the grocery man that no woman was safe a moment when those old reprobates were allowed to run at large, and when she got so low down as to allow people to practice assassination on her with wooden faucets and butter tryers she would join a circus. When the two old men got out on the walk the second one said to the first:
“Didn't you know the woman?”
“Know her? No. I didn't think it was necessary for a formal introduction in a trying time like this, when we all want all the information we can get about the great tragedy. There is no accommodation about some people. But she has gone out now, so let us carry back the spigot and butter tryer, and may be the grocery man will treat to the cider.”
And the two old setters went in and sat down on the barrels and talked about how they had known people along in 1837 to be shot all to pieces and recover.
It is announced in the papers that Colonel Ingersoll, the dollar a ticket infidel, has struck it rich in a silver mine, and is now worth a million dollars. Here is another evidence of the goodness of God. Ingersoll has treated God with the greatest contempt, called Him all the names he could think of, called Him a liar, a heartless wretch, and stood on a stump and dared God to knock a chip off his shoulder, and instead of God's letting him have one below the belt and knocking seven kinds of cold victuals out of him, God gives him a pointer on a silver mine, and the infidel rakes in a cool million, and laughs in his sleeve, while thousands of poor workers in the vineyard are depending for a livelihood on collections that pan out more gun wads and brass pants buttons to the ton of ore than they do silver. This may be all right, and we hope it is, and we don't want to give any advice on anybody else's business, but it would please Christians a good deal better to see that bold man taken by the slack of the pants and lifted into a poor house, while the silver he has had fall to him was distributed among the charitable societies, mission schools and churches, so a minister could get his salary and buy a new pair of trousers to replace those that he has worn the knees out of kneeling down on the rough floor to pray.
It is mighty poor consolation to the ladies of a church society, to give sociables, ice creameries, strawberry festivals and all kinds of things to raise money to buy a carpet for a church or lecture room, and wash their own dishes, and then hear that some infidel who is around the country calling God a pirate and a horse thief, at a dollar a head, to full houses, has miraculously struck a million dollar silver mine.
To the toiling minister who prays without ceasing, and eats codfish and buys clothes at a second hand store, it looks pretty rough to see Bob Inger-soll steered onto a million dollar silver mine. But it may be all right, and we presume it is. Maybe God has got the hook in Bob's mouth, and is letting him play around the way a fisherman does a black bass, and when he thinks he is running the whole business, and flops around and scares the other fish, it is possible Bob may be reeled in, and he will find himself on the bottom of the boat with a finger and thumb in his gills and a big boot on his paunch, and he will be compelled to disgorge the hook and the bait and all, and he will lay there and try to flop out of the boat, and wonder what kind of a game this is that is being played on him.
Everything turns out right some time, and from what we have heard of God, off and on, we don't believe He is going to let no ordinary man, bald headed and apoplectic, carry off all the persimmons, and put his fingers to his nose and dare the ruler of the universe to tread on the tail of his coat.
Bob Ingersoll has got the bulge on all the Christians now, and draws more water than anybody, but He who notes the sparrow's fall has no doubt got an eye on the fat rascal, and some day will close two or three fingers around Bob's throat, when his eyes will stick out so you can hang your hat on them, and he will blat like a calf and get down on his knees and say:
“Please, Mr. God, don't choke so, and I will give it all back and go around and tell the boys that I am the almightiest liar that ever charged a dollar a head to listen to the escaping wind from a blown up bladder. O, good God, don't hurt so. My neck is all chafed.”
And then he will die, and God will continue business at the old stand.
There is an association of old fossils at New York calling themselves the “Anti-Monopoly League,” that has taken the job on their hands of saving the country from eternal and everlasting ruin at the hands of the gigantic monopolies, the railroads, and this league, through its President, L. E. Chittenden, is sending editorials and extracts from speeches delivered by great men who have been refused passes, or who have not been retained by railroads to conduct law suits as much as they think they ought to be, to newspapers all over the country requesting their publication.
The Sungets its regular share of these documents each week, which go into the waste basket with a regularity that is truly remarkable, considering that we are not a railroad monopoly. But there is something so ridiculous about these articles that one cannot help laughing. They claim that the country is in the grasp of the gigantic monopolies, and that they will choke the country to death and ruin everybody, though what the object can be in running the country and everybody in it, is not stated.
These monopolies have taken the country when it was as weak as gruel, and hoisted it by the slack of the pants to the leading position among nations. The monopolies have built their track all over God's creation, where land could not be given away, have hauled emigrants out there and set them up in business, and made the waste land of the government valuable. They have made transportation so cheap that the emigrant from Germany of last year can send wheat from Dakota to the Fatherland, and Bismarck and King William can get it cheaper than they can wheat grown within a mile of their castles.
These monopolies that the played out nine-spot anti-monopoly leagues are howling against have made the country what it is, and if there is anybody in this country that don't like it, they can get emigrant tickets and go to Germany or Norway and take the places of the men that the monopolies are causing to settle here. Of course we could all run railroads better than the owners run them, but as long as we have not got money enough to buy them we better shut up our yap and let Jay Gould and his fellows do what they please with their own, as long as they permit the country to prosper as it is prospering now. The anti-monopoly leaguers had better go to driving street cars.
Again we are called upon to apologize to our readers for advertising what we had reason to expect would occur at the time advertised, but which failed to show up. We allude to the end of the world which was to have taken place last Sunday.
It is with humility that we confess that we were again misled into believing that the long postponed event would take place, and with others we got our things together that we intended to take along, only to be compelled to unpack them Monday morning.
Now this thing is played out, and the next time any party advertises that the world will come to an end, we shall take no stock in it. And then it will be just our luck to have the thing come to an end, when we are not prepared. There is the worst sort of mismanagement about this business somewhere, and we are not sure but it is best to allow God to go ahead and attend to the closing up of earthly affairs, and give these fellows that figure out the end of all things with a slate and pencil the grand bounce.
It is a dead loss to this country of millions of dollars every time there is a prediction that the world will come to an end, because there are lots of men who quit business weeks beforehand and do not try to earn a living, but go lunching around. We lost over fifteen dollars' worth of advertising last week from people who thought if the thing was going up the flue on Sunday there was no use of advertising any more, and we refused twenty dollars' worth more because we thought if that was the last paper we were going to get out we might as well knock off work Friday and Saturday and go and catch a string of perch. The people have been fooled about this thing enough, and the first man that comes around with any more predictions ought to be arrested.
People have got enough to worry about, paying taxes, and buying strawberries and sugar, to can, without feeling that if they get a tax receipt the money will be a dead loss, or if they put up a cellar full of canned fruit the world will tip over on it and break every jar and bust every tin can.
Hereafter we propose to go right along as though the world was going to stay right side up, have our hair cut, and try and behave, and then if old mother earth shoots off into space without any warning we will take our chances with the rest in catching on to the corner of some passing star and throw our leg over and get acquainted with the people there, and maybe start a funny paper and split the star wide open.
“Papa, the cruel policeman has murdered little Gip! He sneaked up and frowed a nice piece of meat to Gip, and Gip he eated it, and fanked the policeman with his tail, and runned after him and teased for more, but the policeman fought Gip had enough, and then Gip stopped and looked sorry he had eaten it, and pretty soon he laid down and died, and the policeman laughed and went off feeling good. If Dan Sheehan was the policeman any more he wouldn't poison my dog, would he, pa?”
The above was the greeting the bald-headedSunman received on Thursday, and a pair of four-year-old brown eyes were full enough of tears to break the heart of a policeman of many years' standing, and the little, crushed master of the dead King Charles spaniel went to sleep sobbing and believing that policemen were the greatest blot upon the civilization of the nineteenth century.
Here was a little fellow that had from the day he first stood on his feet after the scarlet fever had left him alive, been allowing his heart to become entwined with love for that poor little dog. For nearly a year the dog had been ready to play with the child when everybody else was tired out, and never once had the dog been cross or backed out of a romp, and the laughter and the barking has many a time been the only sound of happiness in the neighborhood.
If the boy slept too long after dinner, the dog went and rooted around him as much as to say, “Look a here, Mr. Roy, you can't play this on your partner any longer. You get up here and we will have a high old time, and don't you forget it.” And pretty soon the sound of baby feet and dog's toe nails would be heard on the stairs, and the circus would commence.
If the dog slept too long of an afternoon, the boy would hunt him out, take hold of his tail with one hand, and an ear with the other, and lug him into the parlor, saying, “Gip, too much sleep is what is ruining the dogs in this country. Now, brace up and play horse with me.” And then there was fun.
Well, it is all over; but while we write there is a little fellow sleeping on a tear-stained pillow, dreaming, perhaps, of a heaven where the woods are full of King Charles' spaniel dogs, and a doorkeeper stands with a club to keep out policemen. And still we cannot blame policemen—it is the law that is to blame—the wise men who go to the legislature, and make months with one day too much, pass laws that a dog shall be muzzled and wear a brass check, or he is liable to go mad. Statistics show that not one dog in a million ever goes mad, and that they are more liable to go mad in winter than in summer; but several hundred years ago somebody said that summer was “dog days,” and the law-makers of this enlightened nineteenth century still insist on a wire muzzle at a season of the year when a dog wants air and water, and wants his tongue out.
So we compel our guardians of the peace to go around assassinating dogs. Men, who as citizens, would cut their hands off before they would injure a neighbor's property, or speak harsh to his dog, when they hire out to the city must stifle all feelings of humanity, and descend to the level of Paris scavengers. We compel them to do this. If they would get on their ears and say to the city of Milwaukee, “We will guard your city, and protect you from insult, and die for you if it becomes necessary; but we will see you in hades before we will go around assassinating dogs,” we as a people, would think more of them, and perhaps build them a decent station house to rest in.
The dog law is as foolish as the anti-treating law, and if it were not enforced, no harm would be done. Our legislators have to pass about so many laws anyway, and we should use our judgment about enforcing them.
But the dog is dead, and the little man meditates a terrible revenge. He is going to have a goat that can whip a policeman, he says; then there will be fun around the parsonage.