Read Ebook: Peck's Compendium of Fun Comprising the Choicest Gems of Wit Humor Sarcasm and Pathos of America's Favorite Humorist by Peck George W George Wilbur

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Mon Kee, a Chinaman that was converted to regular United States religious doctrines, and opened a mission in New York for the purpose of converting more heathens and shethens, has been arrested for stealing. This is a terrible blow, and Mon Kee was a terrible plower. A few weeks since the religious papers made more blow over the coming into the fold of that Chinaman than they did over all the editors in the country, who went not astray. Now they have shut up their yawp about him, since he has proved to be no better than Talmage or Beecher.

UNSCREWING THE TOP OF A FRUIT JAR.

There is one thing that there should be a law passed about, and that is, these glass fruit jars, with a top that screws on. It should be made a criminal offense, punishable with death or banishment to Chicago, for a person to manufacture a fruit jar, for preserving fruit, with a top that screws on. Those jars look nice when the fruit is put up in them, and the house-wife feels as though she was repaid for all her perspiration over a hot stove, as she looks at the glass jars of different berries, on the shelf in the cellar.

The trouble does not begin until she has company, and decides to tap a little of her choice fruit. After the supper is well under way, she sends for a jar, and tells the servant to unscrew the top, and pour the fruit into a dish. The girl brings it into the kitchen, and proceeds to unscrew the top. She works gently at first, then gets mad, wrenches at it, sprains her wrist, and begins to cry, with her nose on the underside of her apron, and skins her nose on the dried pancake batter that is hidden in the folds of the apron.

Then the little house-wife takes hold of the fruit can, smilingly, and says she will show the girl how to take off the top. She sits down on the wood-box, takes the glass jar between her knees, runs out her tongue, and twists. But the cover does not twist. The cover seems to feel as though it was placed there to keep guard over that fruit, and it is as immovable as the Egyptian pyramids. The little lady works until she is red in the face, and until her crimps all come down, and then she sets it away to wait for the old man to come home. He comes in tired, disgusted, and mad as a hornet, and when the case is laid before him, he goes out in the kitchen, pulls off his coat and takes the jar.

He remarks that he is at a loss to know what women are made for, anyway. He says they are all right to sit around and do crochet work, but when strategy, brain, and muscle are required, then they can't get along without a man. He tries to unscrew the cover, and his thumb slips off and knocks the skin off the knuckle. He breathes a silent prayer and calls for the kerosene can, and pours a little oil into the crevice, and lets it soak, and then he tries again, and swears audibly.

Then he calls for a tack-hammer, and taps the cover gently on one side, the glass jar breaks, and the juice runs down his trousers leg, on the table and all around. Enough of the fruit is saved for supper, and the old man goes up the back stairs to tie his thumb up in a rag, and change his pants.

All come to the table smiling, as though nothing had happened, and the house-wife don't allow any of the family to have any sauce for fear they will get broken glass into their stomachs, but the "company" is provided for generously, and all would be well only for a remark of a little boy who, when asked if he will have some more of the sauce, says he "don't want no strawberries pickled in kerosene." The smiling little hostess steals a smell of the sauce while they are discussing politics, and believes she does smell kerosene, and she looks at the old man kind of spunky, when he glances at the rag on his thumb and asks if there is no liniment in the house.

The preserving of fruit in glass jars is broken up in that house, and four dozen jars are down cellar to lay upon the lady's mind till she gets a chance to send some of them to a charity picnic. The glass jar fruit can business is played out unless a scheme can be invented to get the top off.

HE WOULDN'T HAVE HIS FATHER CALLED NAMES.

A man died in Oshkosh who was over eighty years of age. After the funeral the minister who conducted the services, said to the son of the deceased, "your father was an octogenarian." The young man colored up, doubled up his fist, and said to the minister that he would like to have him repeat that remark. The minister said, "I say your father was an old octogenarian." He had not more than got the word out of his mouth before the young man struck him on the nose, knocked him down, kicked him in the ear, and when pulled off by a policeman, he said no holyghoster could call his dead father names, not around him. The minister said he couldn't have been more surprised if some one had paid a year's pew rent, than he was when that young man's fist hit him.

PECK'S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

HE QUITS THE DRUG BUSINESS.

"What are you loafing around here for," says the grocery man to the bad boy one day this week. "It is after nine o'clock, and I should think you would want to be down to the drug store. How do you know but there may be somebody dying for a dose of pills?"

"O, darn the drug store. I have got sick of that business, and I have dissolved with the drugger. I have resigned. The policy of the store did not meet with my approval, and I have stepped out and am waiting for them to come and tender me a better position at an increased salary," said the boy, as he threw a cigar stub into a barrel of prunes and lit a fresh one.

"Resigned, eh?" said the grocery man as he fished out the cigar stub and charged the boy's father with two pounds of prunes, didn't you and the boss agree?"

"Not exactly, I gave an old lady some gin when she asked for camphor and water, and she made a show of herself. I thought I would fool her, but she knew mighty well what it was, and she drank about half a pint of gin, and got to tipping over bottles and kegs of paint, and when the drug man came in with his wife, the old woman threw her arms around his neck and called him her darling, and when he pushed her away, and told her she was drunk, she picked up a bottle of citrate of magnesia and pointed it at him, and the cork came out like a pistol, and he thought he was shot, and his wife fainted away, and the police came and took the old gin refrigerator away, and then the drug man told me to face the door, and, when I wasn't looking he kicked me four times, and I landed in the street, and he said if I ever came in sight of the store again he would kill me dead. That is the way I resigned. I tell you, they will send for me again. They never can run that store without me.

"I guess they will worry along without you," said the grocery man. "How does your Pa take your being fired out? I should think it would brake him all up."

"O, I think Pa rather likes it. At first he thought he had a soft snap with me in the drug store, cause he has got to drinking again, like a fish, and he has gone back on the church entirely; but after I had put a few things in his brandy he concluded it was cheaper to buy it, and he is now patronizing a barrel house down by the river.

"One day I put some Castile soap in a drink of drandy, and Pa leaned over the back fence more than an hour, with his finger down his throat. The man that collects the ashes from the alley asked Pa if he had lost anything, and Pa said he was only 'sugaring off.' I don't know what that is. When Pa felt better he came in and wanted a little whisky to take the taste out of his mouth, and I gave him some, with about a teaspoonful of pulverized alum in it. Well, sir, you'd a dide. Pa's mouth and throat was so puckered up that he couldn't talk. I don't think that drugman will make anything by firing me out, because I shall turn all the trade that I control to another store. Why, sir, sometimes there were eight and nine girls in the store all at wonct, on account of my being there. They came to have me put extracts on their handkerchiefs, and to eat gum drops--he will lose all that trade now. My girl that went back on me for the telegraph messenger boy, she came with the rest of the girls, but she found that I could be as 'hawty as a dook.' I got even with her, though. I pretended I wasn't mad, and when she wanted me to put some perfumery on her handkerchief I said 'all right,' and I put on a little geranium and white rose, and then I got some tincture of assafety, and sprinkled it on her dress and cloak when she went out. That is about the worst smelling stuff that ever was, and I was glad when she went out and met the telegraph boy on the corner. They went off together; but he came back pretty soon, about the homesickest boy you ever saw, and he told my chum he would never go with that girl again because she smelled like spoiled oysters or sewer gas. Her folks noticed it, and made her go and wash her feet and soak herself, and her brother told my chum it didn't do any good, she smelled just like a glue factory, and my chum--the darn fool--told her brother that it was me who perfumed her, and he hit me in the eye with a frozen fish, down by the fish store, and that's what made my eye black; but I know how to cure a black eye. I have not been in a drug store eight days, and not know how to cure a black eye; and I guess I learned that girl not to go back on a boy 'cause he smelled like a goat.

"Well, what was it about your leaving the wrong medicine at houses? The policeman in this ward told me you come pretty near killing several people by leaving the wrong medicine."

"The way of it was this. There was about a dozen different kinds of medicine to leave at different places, and I was in a hurry to go to the roller skating rink, so I got my chum to help me, and we just took the numbers of the houses, and when we rung the bell we would hand out the first package we come to, and I understand there was a good deal of complaint. One old maid who ordered powder for her face, her ticket drew some worm lozengers, and she kicked awfully, and a widow who was going to be married, she ordered a celluloid comb and brush, and she got a nursing bottle with a rubber nozzle, and a toothing ring, and she made quite a fuss; but the woman who was weaning her baby and wanted the nursing bottle, she got the comb and brush and some blue pills, and she never made any fuss at all. It makes a good deal of difference, I notice, whether a person gets a better thing than they order or not. But the drug business is too lively for me. I have got to have a quiet place, and I guess I will be a cash boy in a store. Pa says he thinks I was cut out for a bunko steerer, and I may look for that kind of a job. Pa he is a terror since he got to drinking again. He came home the other day, when the minister was calling on Ma, and just cause the minister was sitting on the sofa with Ma, and had his hand on her shoulder, where she said the pain was when the rheumatiz came on, Pa was mad and told the minister he would kick his liver clear around on the other side if he caught him there again, and Ma felt awful about it. After the minister had gone away, Ma told Pa he had got no feeling at all, and Pa said he had got enough feeling for one family, and he didn't want no sky-sharp to help him. He said he could cure all the rheumatiz there was around the house, and then he went down town and didn't get home till most breakfast time. Ma says she thinks I am responsible for Pa's falling into bad ways again, and now I am going to cure him. You watch me, and see if I don't have Pa in the church in less than a week, praying and singing, and going home with the choir singers, just as pious as ever. I am going to get a boy that writes a woman's hand to write to Pa, and--but I must not give it away. But you just watch Pa, that's all. Well, I must go and saw some wood. It is coming down a good deal, from a drug clerk to sawing wood, but I will get on top yet, and don't you forget it."

GIVE US WAR!

We are in receipt of a circular from the American peace society, requesting us to leave a sum of money, in our will, to the society to be applied to the interest of peace. We are opposed to peace, on such terms. Give us war, every time.

THE FIRE NEW YEAR'S DAY.

If there is anything the young men of Rescue Hose Company pride themselves upon, it is in getting themselves up, regardless of expense, on New Year's day, and calling upon their lady friends. On Monday last these young men arrayed themselves in their best clothes and sat around in stores and waited for the time to go calling. Solomon in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these firemen.

Just as the young gentlemen were about throwing away their last cigar at noon, preparatory to calling at the first place on the list, the fire-bell rang, and there was a lively procession followed the steamer down Fourth street in a few minutes. It looked as though a wedding had been broken up and bridegrooms were running around loose. The party arrived at the scene of the fire, which was Matt. Larsen's hotel on the corner of Second and King streets, and such a shinning of swallow-tailed coats up blue ladders was never seen. The fellows that belonged in the house threw out bedsteads and crockery on to stove-pipe hats, and emptied beds on to broadcloth coats. The wedding party disappeared in the third story window with the hose, in the smoke, and after half an hour's work they came out looking as though they had been in the Ashtabula railroad accident. Young Mr. Smith had a stream of dirty water sent up his trousers leg, which went clear up to his collar, and wilted it beyond repair. Mr. Hatch entwined his doeskin pants around the burnt ridge-pole of the roof, hung on to a rafter with his teeth, and chopped shingles, and the pipemen kept him wet, and he looked like a bundle of damp stuff in a paper mill. Mr. Spence was on the top of the ladder, and Mr. Drummond was next below him. In falling, Mr. D. caught hold of one tail of Mr. Spence's swallow hammer coat, and stretched the tail about two feet longer than the other. Mr. Foote was as dry as a bone, until the pipeman saw him, and they nailed him up against the wall with a stream and Foote was damp as a wet nurse in a minute.

Young Mr. Osborne, confidential adviser of Hyde, Cargill & Co., got half way up the ladder, and a leak in the hose struck him and froze him to the ladder, and Mr. Watson had to strike a match and thaw him loose. He wet his pants from Genesis to Revelations, and had to go calling with an ulster overcoat on. The most of the young men, after returning from the fire, stood by the stove and dried themselves, and went calling all the same, but the girls said they smelt like burnt shingles. The boys were all dry enough at the dance in the evening.

SOUTHERN "HONAW."

Bennett and May fought a duel in Maryland the other day, and as near as the truth can be arrived at neither party received a scratch. But their "honaw" was satisfied.

PECK'S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

HIS PA KILLS HIM.

"For heaven's sake dry up that whistling," said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he sat on a bag of peanuts, whistling and filling his pockets. "There is no sense in such whistling. What do you whistle for, anyway?"

"I am practicing my profession," said the boy, as he got up and stretched himself, and cut off a slice of cheese, and took a few crackers. "I have always been a good whistler, and I have decided to turn my talent to account. I am going to hire an office and put out a sign, 'Boy furnished to whistle for lost dogs.' You see there are dogs lost every day, and any man would give half a dollar to a boy to find his dog. I can hire out to whistle for dogs, and can go around whistling and enjoy myself, and make money. Don't you think it is a good scheme?" asked the boy of the grocery man.

"Naw," said the grocery man, as he charged the cheese to the boy's father, and picked up his cigar stub, which he had left on the counter, and which the boy had rubbed on the kerosene barrel, "No, sir, that whistle would scare any dog that heard it. Say, what was your Pa running after the doctor in his shirt sleeves for last Sunday morning? He looked scared. Was your Ma sick again?"

"O, no; Ma is healthy enough, now she has got a new fur lined cloak. She played consumption on Pa, and coughed so she liked to raise her lights and liver, and made Pa believe she couldn't live, and got the doctor to prescribe a fur lined circular, and Pa went and got one, and Ma has improved awfully. Her cough is all gone, and she can walk ten miles. I was the one that was sick. You see, I wanted to get Pa into the church again, and get him to stop drinking, so I got a boy to write a letter to him, in a female hand, and sign the name of a choir singer Pa was mashed on, and tell him she was yearning for him to come back to the church, and that the church seemed a blank without his smiling face, and benevolent heart, and to please come back for her sake. Pa got the letters Saturday night and he seemed tickled, but I guess he dreamed about it all night, and Sunday morning he was mad, and he took me by the ear and said I couldn't come no 'Daisy' business on him the second time. He said he knew I wrote the letter, and for me to go up to the store room and prepare for the almightiest licking a boy ever had, and he went down stairs and broke up an apple barrel and got a stave to whip me with. Well, I had to think mighty quick, but I was enough for him. I got a dried bladder in my room, one that me and my chum got to the slotter house, and I blowed it partly up, so it would be sort of flat like, and I put it down inside the back part of my pants, right about where Pa hits when he punishes me. I knowed when the barrel stave hit the bladder it would explode. Well, Pa came up and found me crying. I can cry just as easy as you can turn on the water at a faucet, and Pa took off his coat and looked sorry. I was afraid he would give up whipping me when he saw me cry, and I wanted the bladder experiment to go on, so I looked kind of hard, as if I was defying him to do his worst, and then he took me by the neck and laid me across a trunk. I didn't dare struggle much for fear the bladder would loose itself, and Pa said, 'Now, Hennery, I am going to break you of this damfoolishness, or I will break your back,' and he spit on his hands and brought the barrel stave down on my best pants. Well, you'd a dide if you had heard the explosion. It almost knocked me off the trunk. It sounded like firing a firecracker away down cellar in a barrel, and Pa looked scared. I rolled off the trunk, on the floor, and put some flour on my face, to make me look pale, and then I kind of kicked my legs like a fellow who is dying on the stage, after being stabbed with a piece of lath, and groaned, and said, 'Pa you have killed me, but I forgive you,' and then rolled around, and frothed at the mouth, cause I had a piece of soap in my mouth to make foam. Well, Pa was all broke up. He said, 'Great God, what have I done? I have broke his spinal column. O, my poor boy, do not die!' I kept chewing the soap and foaming at the mouth, and I drew my legs up and kicked them out, and clutched my hair, and rolled my eyes, and then kicked Pa in the stummick as he bent over me, and knocked his breath out of him, and then my limbs began to get rigid, and I said, 'Too late, Pa, I die at the hand of an assassin. Go for a doctor.' Pa throwed his coat over me, and started down stairs on a run, 'I have murdered my brave boy,' and he told Ma to go up stairs and stay with me, cause I had fallen off a trunk and ruptured a blood vessel, and he went after a doctor. When he went out the front door, I sat up and lit a cigarette, and Ma came up and I told her all about how I fooled Pa, and if she would take on and cry, when Pa got back, I would get him to go to church again, and swear off drinking, and she said she would.

"So when Pa and the doc. came back, Ma was sitting on a velocipede I used to ride, which was in the store-room, and she had her apron over her face, and she just more than bellowed. Pa he was pale, and he told the doc. he was just playing with me with a little piece of board, and he heard something crack, and he guessed my spine got broke falling off the trunk. The doctor wanted to feel where my spine got broke, but I opened my eyes and had a vacant kind of stare, like a woman who leads a dog by a string, and looked as though my mind was wandering, and I told the doctor there was no use setting my spine, as it was broke in several places, and I wouldn't let him feel of the dried bladder. I told Pa I was going to die, and I wanted him to promise me two things on my dying bed. He cried and said he would, and I told him to promise me he would quit drinking, and attend church regular, and he said he would never drink another drop, and would go to church every Sunday. I made him get down on his knees beside me and swear it, and the doc. witnessed it, and Ma said she was so glad, and Ma called the doctor out in the hall and told him the joke, and the doc. came in and told Pa he was afraid Pa's presence would excite the patient, and for him to put on his coat and go out and walk around the block, or go to church, and Ma and he would remove me to another room, and do all that was possible to make my last hours pleasant. Pa he cried, and said he would put on his plug hat and go to church, and he kissed me, and got flour on his nose, and I came near laughing right out, to see the white flour on his red nose, when I thought how the people in church would laugh at Pa. But he went out feeling mighty bad, and then I got up and pulled the bladder out of my pants, and Ma and the doc. laughed awful. When Pa got back from church and asked for me, Ma said that I had gone down town. She said the doctor found my spine was only uncoupled and he coupled it together, and I was all right. Pa was nervous all the afternoon, and Ma thinks he suspects that we played it on him. Say, you don't think there is any harm in playing it on an old man a little for a good cause, do you?"

The grocery man said he supposed, in the interest of reform it was all right, but if it was his boy that played such tricks he would take an ax to him, and the boy went out, apparently encouraged, saying he hadn't seen the old man since the day before, and he was almost afraid to meet him.

A MUSICAL CRITIQUE.

The second lecture of the Library Association course was delivered on Tuesday evening by a female lecturer named Camilla Urso, on a fiddle. The lecturer was supported by a female singer, two male clamsellers, and a piano masher, all of them decidedly talented in their particular lines. The lecture on the fiddle gave the most unbounded satisfaction, and the Association in taking this new departure, has struck a popular chord. Scarcely a person in the vast audience but would prefer such an entertainment to a dry lecture by some dictionary sharp. Of the performance, it is unnecessary to go into details, as all our readers were there, with few exceptions. The fat female, Urso, more than carved the fiddle. She dug sweet morsels of music out of it, all the way from the wish-bone to the part that goes over the fence last. She made it talk Norwegian, and squeezed little notes out of it not bigger than a cambric needle, and as smooth as a book agent. The female singer was fair, though nothing to brag on, while the male grasshopper sufferers sang as well as was necessary. But the most agile flea-catcher that has been here since Anna Dickinson's time, was sixteen-fingered Jack, the sandhill crane that had the disturbance with the piano. We never knew what the row was about, but when he walked up to the piano smiling, and shied his castor into the ring, everybody could see there was going to be trouble. He spit on his hands, sparred a little, and suddenly landed a stunning blow right on the ivory, which staggered the piano, and caused an exclamation of agony. First knock down for Jack. He paused a moment and then began putting in blows right and left, in such a cruel manner that the spectators came near breaking into the ring. Whenever a key showed its head he mauled it. We never saw a piano stand so much punishment, and live, and Jack never got a scratch. The whole concert was a success, and the troupe can always get a good house here.

A DEAD SURE THING.

The only persons that are real sure that their calling and election is sure, and that they are going to heaven across lots, are the men who are hung for murder. They always announce that they have got a dead thing on it, just before the drop falls. How encouraging it must be to children to listen to the prayers of our ministers in churches, who admit that they are miserable sinners living on God's charity, and doubtful if they would be allowed to sit at His right hand, and as they tell the story of their unworthiness the tears trickle down their cheeks. Then let the children read an account of a hanging bee, and see how happy the condemned man is, how he shouts glory hallelujah, and confesses that, though he killed his man, he is going to heaven. A child will naturally ask why don't the ministers murder somebody and make a dead sure thing of it?

PECK'S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

HIS PA MORTIFIED.

"What was the health officer doing over to your house this morning?" said the grocery man to the bad boy, as the youth was firing frozen potatoes at the man who collects garbage in the alley.

"O, they are searching for sewer gas and such things, and they have got plumbers and other society experts till you can't rest, and I came away for fear they would find the sewer gas and warm my jacket. Say, do you think it is right when anything smells awfully, to always lay it to a boy?"

"Well, in nine cases out of ten they would hit it right, but what do you think is the trouble over to your house, honest?"

"S-h-h! Now don't breathe a word of it to a living soul, or I am a dead boy. You see I was over to the dairy fair at the Exposition building Saturday night, and when they were breaking up me and my chum helped to carry boxes of cheese and firkins of butter, and a cheese man gave each of us a piece of limberger cheese, wrapped up in tin foil. Sunday morning I opened my piece, and it made me tired. O, it was the offulest smell I ever heard of, except the smell when they found a tramp who hung himself in the woods on the Whitefish Bay road, and had been dead three weeks. It was just like an old back number funeral. Pa and Ma were just getting ready to go to church, and I cut off a piece of cheese and put it in the inside pocket of Pa's vest, and I put another in the lining of Ma's muff, and they went to church. I went down to church too, and sat on a back seat with my chum, looking just as pious as though I was taking up a collection. The church was pretty warm, and by the time they got up to sing the first hymn Pa's cheese began to smell a match against Ma's cheese. Pa held one side of the hymn book and Ma held the other, and Pa he always sings for all that is out, and when he braced himself and sang 'Just as I am,' Ma thought Pa's voice was tinctured a little with biliousness, and she looked at him and hunched him, and told him to stop singing and breathe through his nose, cause his breath was enough to stop a clock. Pa stopped singing and turned around kind of cross towards Ma, and then he smelled Ma's cheese and he turned his head the other way and said, 'whew,' and they didn't sing any more, but they looked at each other as though they smelled frowy. When they sat down they sat as far apart as they could get, and Pa sat next to a woman who used to be a nurse in a hospital, and when she smelled Pa's cheese she looked at him as though she thought he had the small pox, and she held her handkerchief to her nose. The man in the other end of the pew, that Ma sat near, he was a stranger from Racine, who belongs to our church, and he looked at Ma sort of queer, and after the minister prayed, and they got up to sing again, the man took his hat and went out, and when he came by me he said something in a whisper about a female glue factory.

"Well, sir, before the sermon was over everybody in that part of the church had their handkerchiefs to their noses, and they looked at Pa and Ma scandalous, and the two ushers they came around in the pews looking for a dog, and when the minister got over his sermon, and wiped the prespiration off his face, he said he would like to have the trustees of the church stay after meeting, as there was some business of importance to transact. He said the question of proper ventilation and sewerage for the church would be brought up, and that he presumed the congregation had noticed this morning that the church was unusually full of sewer gas. He said he had spoken of the matter before, and expected it would be attended to before this. He said he was a meek and humble follower of the lamb, and was willing to cast his lot wherever the Master decided, but he would be blessed if he would preach any longer in a church that smelled like a bone boiling establishment. He said religion was a good thing, but no person could enjoy religion as well in a fat rendering establishment as he could in a flower garden, and as far as he was concerned he had got enough. Everybody looked at everybody else, and Pa looked at Ma as though he knew where the sewer gas came from, and Ma looked at Pa real mad, and me and my chum lit out, and I went home and distributed my cheese all around. I put a slice in Ma's bureau drawer, down under her underclothes, and a piece in the spare room, under the bed, and a piece in the bath-room in the soap dish, and a slice in the album on the parlor table, and a piece in the library in a book, and I went to the dining room and put some under the table, and dropped a piece under the range in the kitchen. I tell you the house was loaded for bear. Ma came home from church first, and when I asked where Pa was, she said she hoped he had gone to walk around the block to air hisself. Pa came home to dinner and when he got a smell of the house he opened all the doors, and Ma put a comfortable around her shoulders, and told Pa he was a disgrace to civilization. She tried to get Pa to drink some carbolic acid. Pa finally convinced Ma that it was not him, and then they decided it was the house that smelled so, as well as the church, and all Sunday afternoon they went visiting, and this morning Pa went down to the health office and got the inspector of nuisances to come up to the house, and when he smelled around a spell he said there was dead rats in the main sewer pipe, and they sent for plumbers, and Ma went out to a neighbors to borry some fresh air, and when the plumbers began to dig up the floor in the basement I came over here. If they find any of that limberger cheese it will go hard with me. The hired girls have both quit, and Ma says she is going to break up keeping house and board. That is just into my hand. I want to board at a hotel, where you can have a bill-of-fare, and tooth picks, and billiards, and everything. Well I guess I will go over to the house and stand in the back door and listen to the mocking bird. If you see me come flying out of the alley with my coat tail full of boots you can bet they have discovered the sewer gas."

MRS. LANGTRY.

America is to be visited by the most beautiful woman in all England, Mrs. Langtry. It is said that she is so sweet that when you look at her you feel caterpillars crawling up the small of your back, your heart begins to jump like a box car, and a streak of lightning goes down one trousers leg and up the other, and escapes up the back of your neck, causing the hair to raise and be filled with electricity enough to light a circus tent, and that when looking at her your hands clutch nervously as though you wanted to grasp something to hold you up, a sense of faintness comes over you, your eyes roll heavenward, your head falls helpless on your breast, your left side becomes numb, your liver quits working, your breath comes hot and heavy, your lips turn livid and tremble, your teeth chew on imaginary taffy, and you look around imploringly for somebody to take her away. If all this occurs to a person from looking at her, it would be sudden death or six months illness, to shake hands with her. If she comes to Milwaukee, there is one bald headed man going to the country where they are not so bad. You bet!

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