We know it is fashionable for people to talk about the great monopolies, the railroads, and show how they are sapping the life-blood from the farmers by arranging facilities for transporting wheat worth forty cents a bushel in store pay, without railroads, to a market where the farmer realizes nearly a dollar a bushel in cash.
Demagogues ring the changes on these monopolies, tell how the directors ride in palace cars and drink wine, from the proceeds of the millions of dollars invested in railroads, though they never mention the fact that the railroads have made it possible for farmers to give up driving ox teams and ride after horses that can trot in 2:40.
We presume that railroad managers like to get a pretty good dividend on their investments, but do they get a better dividend than farmers do on some of their investments? Do you know of any farmer that ever complained that his produce was selling too high? If you complain at paying eight dollars for a jag of crow's nest wood during a snow blockade, does he argue with, you, to show that he is a monopoly, or does he tell you that if you don't want the wood you needn't have it?
Now, talking of railroad men manipulating stock, and taking advantage of a raise, how is it about eggs? Within the last two months there has been the worst corner on eggs that the world has ever seen, and the dividends that farmers have received on their investments have been so enormous that they must blush for shame, unless they are a soulless corporation.
Now, for instance, a farmer paid twenty-five cents for a good average hen the 1st of December. Before the 1st of February that hen has laid five dozen eggs, which are worth two dollars and a half. Take out five cents for feed, two cents for the society that the hen has enjoyed, and there is a clear profit of two dollars and forty-three cents, and the farmer has got the hen left. Did any railroad wrecker ever make a greater percentage than that? Talk about watering stock, is it any worse than feeding a hen, to make her lay four-shilling eggs?
We have it from good authority that some farmers have actually gone so far as to bribe legislators with eggs, to prevent their passing any law fixing a rate for the sale of eggs. This is a serious charge, and we do not vouch for it. It is probable that farmers who are sharp enough to get a corner on eggs, by which they can be run up to a fictitious value, are sharp enough not to lay themselves liable for bribery by giving eggs directly to the members, but there are ways to avoid that. They can send them to the residences of the members, where they are worth their weight in gold almost.
Rich railroad owners have submitted to this soulless monopoly of the egg business as long as they can, and we learn that they have organized a state grange, with grips and passwords, and will institute subordinate lodges all over the State to try and break up this vile business that is sapping their life-blood.
Already a bill has been prepared for introduction into the legislature to prohibit any manipulation of the egg market in the future. “Shall the farmers of the State be allowed to combine with hens and roosters and create a famine in eggs, an article of food on which so many people rely to keep soul and body together?” they ask.
Our heart has bled, in the last sixty days, as well as our pocket-book, while studying this question. We have seen men of wealth going about the streets crying for an egg to cool their parched tongues, and they have been turned away eggless, and gone to their palatial homes only to suffer untold agonies, the result of those unholy alliances between farmers and hens. They have tossed sleeplessly on their downy beds, wondering if there was no balm in Gilead, no rooster there. They have looked in vain for compassion on the part of the farmers, who haye only laughed at their sufferings, and put up the price of eggs.
The time has arrived for action on the part of the wealthy consumers of eggs, and we are glad the State grange has been formed. Let a few determined men get together in every community, and swear by the bald-headed profit that they will put down this hen monopoly or die, and after they have sworn, let them send to us for a charter for a lodge—enclosing two dollars in advance—and we will forward to them the ritual of the order.
If this thing is allowed to go on for five years these farmers will be beyond the power of the government to control. This is a grave question, and if the wealthy people do not get relief we might as well bid farewell to our American institutions, as the liberty for which our forefathers fought will not be worth paying taxes for.
There is no person in the world who is easier to overlook the inconsistencies that show themselves on the stage at theatres than we are, but once in a while there is something so glaring that it pains us. We have seen actors fight a duel in a piece of woods far away from any town, on the stage, and when one of them fell, pierced to the heart with a sword, we have noticed that he fell on a Brussels carpet. That is all wrong, but we have stood it manfully.
We have seen a woman, on the stage who was so beautiful that we could be easily mashed if we had any heart left to spare. Her eyes were of that heavenly color that has been written about heretofore, and her smile as sweet as ever was seen, but behind the scenes, through the wings, we have seen her trying to dig the cork out of a beer bottle with a pair of shears, and ask a supe, in harsh tones, where the cork-screw was, while she spread mustard on a piece of cheese, and finally drank the beer from the bottle, and spit the pieces of cork out on the floor, sitting astride of a stage chair, and her boot heels up on the top round, her trail rolled up into a ball, wrong side out, showing dirt from forty different stage floors.
These things hurt. But the worst thing that has ever occurred to knock the romance out of us, was to see a girl in the second act, after “twelve years is supposed to elapse,” with the same pair of red stockings on that she wore in the first act, twelve years before. Now, what kind of a way is that? It does not stand to reason that a girl would wear the same pair of stockings twelve years. Even if she had them washed once in six months, they would be worn out. People notice these things.
What the actresses of this country need is to change their stockings. To wear them twelve years, even in their minds, shows an inattention to the details and probabilities of a play, that must do the actresses an injury, if not give them corns. Let theatre-goers insist that the stockings be changed oftener, in these plays that sometimes cover half a century, and the stockings will not become moth-eaten. Girls, look to the little details. Look to the stockings, as your audiences do, and you will see how it is yourselves.
Last Wednesday the bell to our telephone rung violently at 8 o'clock in the morning, and when we put our ear to the earaphone, and our mouth to the mouthaphone, and asked what was the matter, a still small voice, evidently that of a lady, said, “Julia has got worms, doctor.”
We were somewhat taken back, but supposing Julia was going fishing, we were just going to tell her not to forget to spit on her bait, when a male voice said, “O, go to the devil, will you?” We couldn't tell whose voice it was, but it sounded like the clerk at the Plankinton House, and we sat down.
There is no man who will go further to accommodate a friend than we will, but by the great ethereal there are some things we will not do to please anybody. As we sat and meditated, the bell rung once more, and then we knew the wires had got tangled, and that we were going to have trouble all day. It was a busy day, too, and to have a bell ringing beside one's ear all day is no fun.
The telephone is a blessed thing when it is healthy, but when its liver is out of order it is the worst nuisance on record. When it is out of order that way you can hear lots of conversation that you are not entitled to. For instance, we answered the bell after it had rung several times, and a sweet little female voice said, “Are you going to receive to-morrow?” We answered that we were going to receive all the time. Then she asked what made us so hoarse? We told her that we had sat in a draft from the bank, and it made the cold chills run over us to pay it. That seemed to be satisfactory, and then she began to tell us what she was going to wear, and asked if we thought it was going to be too cold to wear a low neck dress and elbow sleeves. We told her that was what we were going to wear, and then she began to complain that her new dress was too tight in various places that she mentioned, and when the boys picked us up off the floor and bathed our temples, and we told them to take her away, they thought we were crazy.
If we have done wrong in talking with a total stranger, who took us for a lady friend, we are willing to die. We couldn't help it. For an hour we would not answer the constant ringing of the bell, but finally the bell fluttered as though a tiny bird had lit upon the wire and was shaking its plumage. It was not a ring, but it was a tune, as though an angel, about eighteen years old, a blonde angel, was handling the other end of the transmitter, and we felt as though it was wrong for us to sit and keep her in suspense, when she was evidently dying to pour into our auricular appendage remarks that we ought to hear.
And still the bell did flut. We went to the cornucopia, put our ear to the toddy stick and said, “What ailest thou darling, why dost thy hand tremble? Whisper all thou feelest to thine old baldy.” Then there came over the wire and into our mansard by a side window the following touching remarks: “Matter enough. I have been ringing here till I have blistered my hands. We have got to have ten car loads of hogs by day after to-morrow or shut down.” Then there was a stuttering, and then another voice said, “Go over to Loomis' pawn shop. A man shot in”—and another voice broke in, singing, “The sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful”—and another voice said—“girl I ever saw. She was riding with a duffer, and wiped her nose as I drove by in the street car, and I think she is struck after me.”
It was evident that the telephone was drunk, and we went out in the hall and wrote on a barrel all the afternoon, and gave it full possession of the office.
Mr. Peck was recently extended an invitation to be present at a meeting of the Iowa Commercial Travelers' Association, at Des Moines, and respond to the toast: “Our Wives and Sweethearts, and Little Ones at Home.” He couldn't be present, but he responded all the same, in the following manner:
“That is the sweetest toast that man was ever called upon to respond to. Very few traveling men who have good wives, loving sweethearts, and dear little children at home, sending loving messages to them, often ever stray very far from the straight and narrow path. There is no class of men on earth that has greater temptations and better opportunities to be 'cusses on wheels' than the traveling men of the Northwest; and when I say that they stand up under it a confounded sight better than the same number of ministers or editors would, I don't want you to think I am giving you any confectionery from my sample case.
“Through snows of winter, mud of spring and fall, and heat of summer, the traveling man makes his connections and sends in his orders, and seems to enjoy religion with the best of them. But the happiest days for him and the shortest are those he spends at home with his wife, the children or sweet-heart. There can be more tears brought to the eyes of the traveling man by a little child putting its arms around his neck and saying, 'My dear, precious papa,' than could be brought out by any other press I know of, however powerful.
“I know there is occasionally a traveling man who always has his sign out ready to be mashed, but he never neglects his business for any foolish-ness. He would leave the finest country flirt that ever winked a wink to sell a bill of brown sugar on sixty days' time.
“It is said that the average traveling man will keep a whole seat in a car, and never offer to give half of it to a man, when, if a handsome woman comes in, he will fly around and divide with her. Well, who the deuce wouldn't? That shows that his heart is in the right place. A man can go into the smoking car and sit on the wood box, but a woman has got to sit down, at least that is the way I should explain it.
“Boys, may the trips become shorter each year, and the visits to the dear ones at home be extended, so that in time you may be detailed to stay at home always, with an increase of salary or an interest in the business; and, I am sure, when the time comes you will be the happiest fellows that ever had thousand mile tickets punched, and when your time comes to attend the grand banquet above, and you appear before St. Peter at the gate, and begin to open up your samples, he will simply look at your business card and turn to the clerk and say, 'Give these boys all front rooms, and see that there is a fire escape and plenty of towels, and that the rooms are aired, and then step down to the box office and reserve them some seats for the sacred concert this evening. Pass right in now and get a check for your overshoes.'”
Sometimes our heart bleeds for actors and actresses, when we think what they have to go through with. The other night at Watertown, N. Y., Miss Ada Gray was playing “Camille,” and in the dying scene, where she breathes her last, to slow music, an accident occurred which broke her all up. She was surrounded by sorrowing friends, who were trying to do everything to make it pleasant for her, when the bed on which she was dying,—an impromptu sort of a bed got up by the stage carpenter,—tipped partly over, and the dying woman rolled over on the stage, tipped over a wash-stand filled with tumblers and bottles of medicine, and raised a deuce of a row. It would have been all right, and she could have propped the bed up and proceeded with her dying, had not the actress got rattled.
Most actresses get lost entirely when anything occurs that is not in the play, and Miss Gray was the scaredest female that ever lived. She thought it was a judgment on her for playing a dying character, and thought the whole theatre had been struck by lightning, and was going to fall down. To save herself was her first thought, so she grabbed her night-dress,—which was embroidered up and down the front, and had point lace on the yoke of the sleeves,—in both hands and started for the orchestra, the wildest corpse that ever lived.
The leader of the orchestra caught her, but not being an undertaker he did not undertake to hold her, and she fell over the bass viol and run one foot through the snare drum, and grasping the fiddle for a life-preserver she jumped into the raging scenery-back of the stage which represented a sea.
They had to pull her out with boat-hooks, and it was half an hour before she could be induced to go to bed again and proceed with her dying.
Actresses are often annoyed at the remarks made by foolish fellows in the audience. A remark by a person in the audience always causes people to laugh, whether the speaker says anything smart or not.
Recently, in the play of “Cinderella at School,” a girl came out with a sheet over her, as a ghost, to frighten a young fellow who was “mashed” on her. He looked at the ghost for a moment, and kept on lighting his cigarette, when a galloot up in the gallery said, so everybody could hear it, “He don't scare worth a damn!” and the audience went fairly wild, while the pretty girl stood there and blushed as though her heart would break.
Such things are wrong.
Probably one of the meanest tricks that was ever, played was played on Mary Anderson. It will be remembered that in the play of “Ingomar,” Parthenia and the barbarian have several love scenes, where they lop on each other and hug some—that is, not too much hugging, but just hugging enough. Ingomar wears a huge fur garment, made of lion's skin, or something. One day he noticed that the moths were getting into it, and he told his servant to see about the moths, and drive them out. The servant got some insect powder and blowed the hair of the garment full of it, and scrubbed the inside of it with benzine.
Ingomar put it on just before he went on the stage, and thought it didn't smell just right, but he had no time to inquire into it. He had not got fairly in his position, before Parthenia came out on a hop, skip and jump, and threw herself all over him. She got one lung full of insect powder, and the other full of benzine, and as she said, “Wilt always love me, Ingomar?” she dropped her head over his shoulder, and said in an aside, “For the love of heaven, what have you been drinking?” and then sneezed a couple times.
Ingomar held her up the best he could, considering that his nose was full of insect powder, and he answered:
“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.
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 appetite-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 hell 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 canvass 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.
The Duchess 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 compassion 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 compassion. 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 Duchess of Marlborough.
You take two plates, and put on one of them the letters expressing good will and compassion, 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 compassion. 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 compassion, 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 Duchess with more admiration than the generosity of the British nation. It is the most remarkable thing we ever heard of.
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 embarrassing 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.
We are sorry to see so many of the humorous papers find any fun in the incident of the girl at Keokuk who was hugged to death by her lover. He had proposed to her, in her father's parlor, and she had accepted him, and in a moment of ecstacy he hugged her to his breast, and she died at once. The young man was horror stricken, and called her parents. It is supposed that she died of heart disease. The case was very sad, indeed, and papers should not make fun of an occurrence that brings so much sadness.
However, while this case is fresh in the minds of old and young, we will embrace the opportunity, and embrace it gently, for fear we will kill it, to again impress upon young people what we have so often advised, and that is to be unusually careful about how they hug girls. Many a young man hugs a girl almost to death, and he never knows how near he comes to being a murderer.
Girls now-a-days are not what they used to be when you and I were young, Maggie. They cannot stand as much grief now as girls did twenty years ago. Somehow, they don't seem to be put up for hugging. If a man puts his arm around a seven-teen-year-old girl of the present day, and sort of closes in on the belt, he expects to hear something break. Many a humane man lets go before he has got a girl half hugged because the girl looks so frail that he is afraid he will break her in two.
Of course there are exceptions to the frail girls, but the majority are too much like a bundle of asparagus. Some of the girls of the present day are robust, and seem to be offended if a person lets up on the hugging on their account, and it is said they hug back with a vigor which reminds a man of the days of long ago, but they are few and far between.
Too much care cannot be exercised in putting arms around the young girls of to-day, and we would wish to impress this fact upon the minds of the young men who are just coming upon the stage of action. Of course, men along in years do not need advice. The boys are apt to put more force into the right arm than they are aware of, a hundred per cent, more than they would be apt to do in sawing wood, or in carrying up a scuttle of coal.
They should bear in mind that girls are too valuable to be used in developing the muscles, as you would a gymnasium. You don't have to squeeze a girl till her liver is forced from its normal position, and she chokes and catches her breath, to show her that you love her. A gentle squeeze of the hand, the stealing of the arm around her waist when she is not looking, and the least pressure upon her belt is all that the law requires.
She can tell by your face whether you love her, as you sit there in the twilight looking into the guiding star eyes, as well as though you grabbed her as you would a sack of wheat, and hung on like a dog to a root.
Anna Dickinson is going upon the stage again and is to play male characters, such as “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” and “Claude Melnotte.” We have insisted for years that Anna Dickinson was a man, and we dare anybody to prove to the contrary.
There is one way to settle this matter, and that is when she plays Hamlet. Let the stage manager put a large spider in the skull of Yorick, and when Hamlet takes up the skull and says, “Alas, poor Yorick, I was pretty solid with him,” let the spider crawl out of one of the eye holes onto Hamlet's hand, and proceed to walk up Miss Dickinson's sleeve. If Hamlet simply shakes the spider off, and goes on with the funeral, unconcerned, then Miss Dickinson is a man. But if Hamlet screams bloody murder, throws the skull at the grave digger, falls over into the grave, tears his shirt, jumps out of the grave and shakes his imaginary skirts, gathers them all up in his hands and begins to climb up the scenes like a Samantha cat chased by a dog, and gets on top of the first fly and raises Hamlet's back and spits, then Miss Dickinson is a woman. The country will watch eagerly for the result of the test, which we trust will be made at the Boston Theatre next week.
It pains us to announce that the Young Men's Christian Association, 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 that it was possible to do for their comfort, and to cheer them in their lonely life. That their proximity to theSunoffice has been beneficial to them we are assured, 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 have 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, wedidfeel 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 up 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 glasses on our center 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 towards 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 association 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 gone across the beautiful river, and have camped near theChristian Statesmanoffice, 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 back talk, and they have any trouble about getting in, the good old doorkeeper is hereby assured that we will vouch for the true goodness and self-sacrificing devotion of the Milwaukee Young Men's Christian association, and he is asked to pass them in and charge it up to theSun.
One of those Fourth of July accidents that are always looked for but seldom occur, happened at Racine, Monday night, which struck terror to the hearts and other portions of the bodies of many eminent citizens, and that none were killed we can all thank Providence, who tempers the fire-works to the sweaty citizen in his shirt sleeves. The enterprising citizens had contributed a large sum of money, which had been judiciously expended in all kinds of fire-works, and one side of the public square was given up to the display.
Thousands of citizens had gathered there, from city and country, and bright Roman candles shone o'er fair men and brave women, and sixteen thousand nine hundred and twelve hearts beat happy, while music arose with its voluptuous swell, and soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, or words to that effect. At least that was what a young fellow from Racine told us, who was there to see a specialist to have a splinter from a rocket stick removed from his ear.
A few pieces had been shot off, a few bunches of crackers had had their tails tied together and been hung over a wire clothes line, like cats, to fight it out, and the crowd was holding its breath for the next boom, when there was an explosion; the earth seemed to tremble, and the air was full of all kinds of fire-works. The whole supply of fire-works had become ignited, and were blowing off where they listeth, without regard to anybody's feelings.
The crowd became panic stricken, and there never was another such a scene, and never will be until the last great day, when a few thousand people suddenly find that they have got into hell, by mistake, when they thought they were ticketed through to the other place. It was perfectly awful. Prominent citizens who usually display great pluck, became fearfully rattled.
A man named Martindale, a railroad man who weighs over two hundred pounds, was standing near a telegraph pole, and as the firing commenced he climbed up the pole as easy as a squirrel would climb a tree, and when it was over they had to get a fire ladder to get him down, as his pants had got caught over the glass telegraph knob, and he had forgotten the combination, and besides he said he didn't want to take off his clothes up there and come down, even if itwasdark, because it would be just his luck to have some one fire off a Roman candle when he got down.
The Hon. Norton J. Field was another man who lost his nerve. He was explaining to some ladies one of the pieces that was to be fired off, which was an allegorical picture representing the revolution, when the whole business blew up. He thought at the time, that the explosion was in the programme, and was just reassuring the ladies, by telling them it reminded him of battle scenes he had witnessed when he was on the military committee in the assembly, when he noticed a girl near him whose polonaise had caught fire, and he rushed up to her, caught her by the dress, intending, with his cool hands, to put out the fire.
The girl felt some one feeling, as she supposed, for her pocket-book, and she started to run, yelling, “pickpocket,” and left the burning polonaise in Mr. Field's hands. He blushed, and was about to explain to his lady friends how the best of us are liable to have our motives misconstrued, when somebody threw a box of four dozen of those large firecrackers right at his feet, and they were all on fire. Ten of them exploded at once, and he grabbed the polonaise in one hand and his burning coat tail in the other, and started West on a run.
The steward of the Gideon's Band Club House, at Burlington, said he arrived there at daylight on the morning of the 5th, and he still held the pieces of dress, but the whole back of his coat was burned off, and his suspenders just held by a thread. He said the comet struck the earth at Racine, at 9:30 the night before, and knocked the town into the lake, and he and another fellow were all that escaped.
The narrowest escape was that of young Mr. Oberman. He is a small man, all except his heart and feet, and when the air began to fill with patriotic missiles, he started to run. On passing theNewsoffice he had to jump over the old coal stove that stood there, and while he was in the air, six feet from the sidewalk, a sky rocket stick passed through his coat tail and pinned him to the building, where he hung suspended, while other rocket sticks were striking all around him, Roman candle colored balls were falling on his unprotected head, etc., and one of these nigger chasers, that run all over the ground, climbed up the side of the building and tried to get in his pants pocket.
Mr. Oberman begged Mr. Wright, the postmaster, to cut him down, but Mr. Wright, who was using both hands and his voice trying to disengage a package of pin-wheels from the back portion of his coat, which were on fire and throwing out colored sparks, said he hadn't got time, as he was going down to the river to take a sitz bath for his health.
The man that keeps the hotel next door to theNewsoffice came out with a pail of water, yelled “fire,” and threw the water on Mr. Curt Treat's head. Mr. Treat was very much vexed, and told the hotel man if he couldn't tell the difference between an auburn haired young man and a pin-wheel, he'd better go and hire somebody that could. Friends of Mr. Treat say that he would be justified in going into the hotel and ordering a bottle of pop, and then refusing to pay for it, as the water took all the starch out of his shirt.
Those who saw the explosion say it was one of the most magnificent, yet awful and terrible sights ever witnessed, and the only wonder is that somebody was not hurt. What added to the terror of the scene was when they went to the artesian well to get water to put out the fire and found that the well had ceased flowing. On investigation they found that Mr. Sage, the Assemblyman, had crawled into the pipe.
By the way, Mr. Oberman finally got down from his terrible position by the aid of the editor of theJournal, to whom Mr. Oberman promised coal enough to run his engine for a year. Very few men displayed any coolness except Mr. Treat and Mr. Sage.