Peck's Compendium of Fun Part 6

PECK'S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

HIS PA DISSECTED.

"I understand your Pa has got to drinking again like a fish," says the grocery man to the bad boy, as the youth came in the grocery and took a handful of dried apples. The boy ate a dried apple and then made up a terrible face, and the grocery man asked him what he was trying to do with his face. The boy caught his breath and then said:

"Say, don't you know any better than to keep dried apples where a boy can get hold of them when he has got the mumps? You will kill some boy yet by such dum carelessness. I thought these were sweet dried apples, but they are sour as a boarding house keeper, and they make me tired. Didn't you ever have the mumps? Gosh, but don't it hurt though? You have got to be darn careful when you have the mumps, and not go out bob-sledding, or skating, or you will have your neck swell up biggern a milk pail. Pa says he had the mumps once when he was a boy and it broke him all up."

"Well, never mind the mumps, how about your Pa spreeing it. Try one of those pickles in the jar there, won't you. I always like to have a boy enjoy himself when he comes to see me," said the grocery man, winking to a man who was filling an old fas.h.i.+oned tin box with tobacco out of the pail, who winked back as much as to say, "if that boy eats a pickle on top of them mumps we will have a circus, sure."

"You can't play no pickle on me, not when I have the mumps. Ma pa.s.sed the pickles to me this morning, and I took one mouthful, and like to had the lockjaw. But Ma didn't do it on purpose, I guess. She never had the mumps and didn't know how discouraging a pickle is. Darn if I didn't feel as though I had been struck in the b.u.t.t of the ear with a brick. But about Pa. He has been fuller'n a goose ever since New Year's day. I think its wrong for women to tempt feeble minded persons with liquor on New Year's. Now me and my chum, we can take a drink and then let it alone. We have got brain, and know when we have got enough, but Pa, when he gets to going don't ever stop until he gets so sick that he can't keep his stummick inside of hisself. It is getting so they look to me to brace Pa up every time he gets on a tear, and I guess I fixed him this time so he will never touch liquor again. I scared him so his bald head turned gray in a single night."

"What under the heavens have you done to him now?" says the grocery man, in astonishment. "I hope you haven't done anything you will regret in after years."

"Regret nothing," said the boy, as he turned the lid of the cheese box back and took the knife and sliced off a piece of cheese, and took a few crackers out of a barrel, and sat down on a soap box by the stove, "You see Ma was annoyed to death with Pa. He would come home full, when she had company, and lay down on the sofa and snore, and he would smell like a distillery. It hurt me to see Ma cry, and I told her I would break Pa of drinking if she would let me, and she said if I would promise not to hurt Pa to go ahead, and I promised not to. Then I got my chum and another boy, to help, and Pa is all right. We went down to the place where they sell arms and legs, to folks who have served in the army, or a saw mill, or a thres.h.i.+ng machine, and lose their limbs, and we borrowed some arms and legs, and fixed up a dissecting room. We fixed a long table in the bas.e.m.e.nt, big enough to lay Pa out on you know, and then we got false whiskers and moustaches, and when Pa came in the house drunk and lay down on the sofa, and got to sleep, we took him and laid him out on the table, and took some trunk straps, and a circingle and strapped him down to the table. He slept right along all through it, and we had another table with the false arms and legs on, and we rolled up our sleeves, and smoked pipes, just like I read that medical students do when they cut up a man.

"Well, you'd a dide to see Pa look at us when he woke up. I saw him open his eyes, and then we began to talk about cutting up dead men. We put hickery nuts in our mouths so our voices would sound different, so he wouldn't know us, and was telling the other boys about what a time we had cutting up the last man we bought. I said he was awful tough, and when we had got his legs off and had taken out his brain, his friends came to the dissecting room and claimed the body, and we had to give it up, but I saved the legs. I looked at Pa on the table and he began to turn pale, and he squirmed around to get up, but found he was fast. I had pulled his s.h.i.+rt up under his arms, while he was asleep, and as he began to move I took an icicle, and in the dim light of the candles, that were sitting on the table in beer botles, I drew the icicle across Pa's stummick and I said to my chum, 'Doc, I guess we had better cut open this old duffer and see if he died from inflamation of the stummick, from hard drinking, as the coroner said he did.' Pa shuddered all over when he felt the icicle going over his bare stummick, and he said, 'For G.o.d's sake, gentlemen, what does this mean? I am not dead.'

"The other boys looked at Pa with astonishment, and I said 'Well, we bought you for dead, and the coroner's jury said you were dead, and by the eternal we ain't going to be fooled out of a corpse when we buy one, are we Doc?' My chum said not if he knowed his self, and the other students said, 'Of course he is dead. He thinks he is alive, but he died day before yesterday, fell dead on the street, and his folks said he had been a nuisance and they wouldn't claim the corpse, and we bought it at the morgue.' Then I drew the icicle across him again, and I said, 'I don't know about this, doctor. I find that blood follows the scalpel as I cut through the cuticle. Hand me the blood sponge please.' Pa began to wiggle around, and we looked at him, and my chum raised his eye-lid, and looked solemn, and Pa said, 'Hold on gentlemen. Don't cut into me any more, and I can explain this matter. This is all a mistake. I was only drunk.' We went in a corner and whispered, and Pa kept talking all the time. He said if we would postpone the hog killing he could send and get witnesses to prove that he was not dead, but that he was a respectable citizen, and had a family. After we held a consultation I went to Pa and told him that what he said about being alive might possibly be true, though we had our doubts. We had found such cases before in our practice east, where men seemed to be alive, but it was only temporary. Before we had got them cut up they were dead enough for all practical purposes. Then I laid the icicle across Pa's abdomen, and went on to tell him that even if he _was_ alive it would be better for him to play that he _was_ dead, because he was such a nuisance to his family that they did not want him, and I was telling him that I had heard that in his lifetime he was very cruel to his boy, a bright little fellow who was at the head of his cla.s.s in Sunday school and a pet wherever he was known, when Pa interrupted me and said, 'Doctor, please take that carving knife off my stomach, for it makes me nervous. As for that boy of mine, he is the condemndest little whelp in town, and he isn't no pet anywhere. Now, you let up on this dissectin'

business, and I will make it all right with you.' We held another consultation and then I told Pa that we did not feel that it was doing justice to society to give up the body of a notorious drunkard, after we had paid twenty dollars for the corpse. If there was any hopes that he would reform and try and lead a different life, it would be different, and I said to the boys, 'gentlemen, we must do our duty. Doc, you dismember that leg, and I will attend to the stomach and the upper part of body. He will be dead before we are done with him. We must remember that society has some claim on us, and not let our better natures be worked upon by the _post mortem_ promises of a dead drunkard.' Then I took my icicle and began fumbling around the abdomen portion of Pa's remains, and my chum took a rough piece of ice and began to saw his leg off, while the other boy took hold of the leg and said he would catch it when it dropped off.

Well, Pa kicked like a steer. He said he wanted to make one more appeal to us, and we acted sort of impatent but we let up to hear what he had to say. He said if we would turn him loose he would give us ten dollars more than we paid for his body, and that he would never drink another drop as long as he lived. Then we whispered some more and then told him we thought favorably of his last proposition, but he must swear, with his hand on the leg of a corpse we were then dissecting that he would never drink again, and then he must be blindfolded and be conducted several blocks away from the dissecting room, before we could turn him loose. He said that was all right, and so we blindfolded him, and made him take a b.l.o.o.d.y oath, with his hand on a piece of ice that we told him was a piece of another corpse, and then we took him out of the house and walked him around the block four times, and left him on a corner, after he had promised to send the money to an address that I gave him. We told him to stand still five minutes after we left him, then remove the blindfold, and go home. We watched him, from behind a board fence, and he took off the handkerchief, looked at the name on a street lamp, and found he was not far from home. He started off saying 'That's a pretty narrow escape old man. No more whisky for you.' I did not see him again until this morning, and when I asked him where he was last night he shuddered and said 'none of your darn business. But I never drink any more, you remember that.' Ma was tickled and she told me I was worth my weight in gold. Well, good day. That cheese is musty." And the boy went and caught on a pa.s.sing sleigh.

COL. INGERSOLL PRAYING.

Bob. Ingersoll is taking a rest from his persecutions of the Creator, and is traveling in the Yo Semite region of California. Bob does not believe there is a G.o.d, but if he was riding a kicking mule, down the precipice near the big trees, and the saddle should turn over with him, and his foot should be caught in the stirrup, after the mule had kicked him a few times in the judgement seat, which is the bowels, in his case, he would be very apt to bellow like a calf, and say "O, Lord, please unbuckle that cussed strap." We should like to hear Bob had met with some such accident, just so he would recognize the foreign government of the Lord, which at present he totally ignores. Not that we have anything against Ingersoll.

HOW TO INVEST A THOUSAND DOLLARS.

A young man advertises in a Milwaukee paper for a partners.h.i.+p. He wants to invest one thousand dollars in some established business. Go to La Crosse and go to betting on election. It pays, and is an established business.

There's millions in it.

BOYS AND CIRCUSES.

There is one thing the American people have got to learn, and that is to give scholars in schools a half holiday when there is a circus in town. We know that we are in advance of many of the prominent educators of the country when we advocate such a policy, but sooner or later the people whose duty it is to superintend schools will learn that we are right, and they will have to catch up with us or resign.

In the first place, a boy is going to attend a circus if there is one in town, and the question before teachers and superintendents should be, not how to prevent him from going to the circus, but how to keep his mind on his books the day before the circus and the day after. There have been several million boys made into liars by school officials attempting to prevent their going to circusses, and we contend that it is the duty of teachers to place as few temptations to lie as possible in the way of boys.

If a boy knows that there will be no school on the afternoon of circus day, he will study like a whitehead all the forenoon, and learn twice as much as he will in all day if he can't go. If he knows there is a conspiracy on foot between his parents and the teachers to keep him from the circus, he begins to think of some lie to get out of school. He will be sick, or run away, or something.

He will get there if possible. And after the first lie succeeds in getting him out of school, he is a liar from the word go. There is something, some sort of electricity that runs from a boy to a circus, and all the teachers in the world cannot break the connection. A circus is the boys' heaven.

You may talk to him about the beautiful gates ajar, and the angel band in heaven that plays around the great white throne, and he can't understand it, but the least hint about the circus tent, with the flap pulled to one side to get in, and the band wagon, and the girls jumping through hoops, and the clown, and he is onto your racket at a jump.

You may try to paralyze him by the story of Daniel in the den of lions, and how he was saved by faith in the power above, and the boy's mind will revert to the circus, where a man in tights and spangles goes in and bosses the lions and tigers around, and he will wonder if Daniel had a rawhide, and backed out of the cage with his eye on the boss lion.

At a certain age a circus can hold over heaven or anything else in a boy's mind, and as long as the circus does not hurt him, why not shut up shop a half a day and let him go? If you keep him in school he wont learn anything, and he will go to the circus in the evening and be up half the night seeing the canvas men tear down the tent and load up, and the next day he is all played out and not worth a continental. To some it would look foolish to dismiss school for a circus, but it will cement a friends.h.i.+p between teachers and scholars that nothing else could.

Suppose, a day or two before the circus arrives, the teacher should say to the school: "Now I want you kids to go through your studies like a tramp through a boiled dinner, and when the circus comes we will close up this ranch and all go to the circus, and if any of you can't raise the money to go, leave your names on my desk and I will see you inside the tent if I have to p.a.w.n my s.h.i.+rt."

Of course it is a male teacher we are supposing said this. Well, don't you suppose those boys and girls would study? They would fairly whoop it up.

And then suppose the teacher found forty boys that hadn't any money to go and he had no school funds to be used for such a purpose.

How long would it take him to collect the money by going around among business men who had been boys themselves? He would go into a store and say he was trying to raise money to take some of the poor children to the circus, and a dozen hands would go down into a dozen pockets in two jerks of a continued story, and they would all chip in.

O, we are too smart. We are trying to fire education into boys with a shot gun, when we ought to get it into them inside of sugar coated pills. Let us turn over a new leaf now, and show these boys that we have got souls in us, and that we want them to have a good time if we don't lay up a cent.

THE WATERS OF LA CROSSE.

We have heretofore entirely overlooked the magnetic qualities of the La Crosse water. It will be remembered that the Fond du Lac water is advertised as magnetic water, and it has been said that a knife blade, after being soaked in the water will take up a watch key or a steel pen.

That is nothing compared to the La Crosse water. Last week a man who had been soaked in La Crosse water, took up a watch, key and all, and a policeman who had been using the water took up the man, with the watch. A pair of ice tongs, made of steel, on being soaked in water, took up a piece of ice weighing over a hundred pounds, and a farmer named Dawson, after drinking the water took up a stray colt. A young couple stopped the other evening and took a drink of water and up Fourth street, and before they got to Seymour's corner they were walking so close together that you couldn't tell which the bustle was on. We have never seen water that had so much magnetism in as this. A pot of it on a house is better than a lightning rod.

SARDINEINDIANAPOLIS.

In company with a couple of hundred others who were firm in the belief that the Sardinapalus troupe were under the auspices of the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation, we attended the performance on Monday evening. It was heralded as coming from Booth's theater, N.Y., where it had a run of four months. Most of them got away while on the trip here, and only a few appeared. The scenery, which was also extensively advertised, was no more than could have been fixed up with a whitewash brush in half a day, by home talent. The play, what there was of it was well rendered, though many doubted the propriety of the king calling around him a lot of La Crosse soldiers, to hear him tell the Greek slave how he loved her. There was much dissatisfaction about the Greek slave. All marble statues of the Greek slave represent her with nothing on but a trace chain around one arm and one leg. But the party who got up this play went behind the returns and invested her with a white night gown, which detracted very much from history. The "soldiers" were picked up among the La Crosse boys, and they got tangled up, and couldn't form a line to save themselves, and when they stood against the wall it was a melancholy fact that they tickled the ballet girls in the ribs as they pa.s.sed by. This was highly wrong. It takes the romance out of the affair to gaze upon an a.s.syrian soldier, covered with armor, and carrying a cover to a wash boiler in his hand, and to think that he is covered with scars won in battle, and then look at him through a gla.s.s and have him wink at you, and you find that you have seen him thousands of times standing on the postoffice corner, spitting tobacco juice across the sidewalk at the hydrant. Mrs. Sardinapalus did not appear, having gone to visit her uncle, but "Sard." stuck to the Greek slave like a sand burr to a boy's trousers. They laid down together on a bale of paper rags and looked at the dance. The dance was pretty good. First there came out about a dozen girls in tights, with skirts as short as pie crust. Their legs were all round and well got up, showing that the sawdust was evenly distributed, with no chance for dissatisfaction. They capered around, and smiled at the reflection of the red lights in the gallery upon the bald heads before them, and kicked up like all possessed, and then they backed up against the wings and fooled with the La Cross a.s.syrians, who came down like a wolf on the fold. Then there came out two first-cla.s.s dancers, one short, fat, plump, but mighty small, so small that she didn't look as though she was big enough for a cork to a jug. But she could dance. Well, she ought to, as she had no clothes to bother her. Next came a brunette, evidently of French extraction, with a face that was a protection against a.s.sault with intent to kill, and legs of the Gothic style. Smith said she was spavined, but that's a lie. She danced better than all of them, and walked on her big toes till the audience yelled. Then the dancers all got tangled up together, the brunette fell over on the little blonde, stuck her hind foot right in the air as straight as a liberty pole struck by lightning, somebody said "Tableau," and the curtain went down, and the audience looked at each other as much as to say, "Let's go home." The boys in the gallery cheered, and the curtain was rung up again, but her flag was still there. Then they had a fighting scene, where everybody gets mad and goes out into the dressing room and clashes old swords together, and come back wounded. The king, after killing up a lot ahead, got a furlough and came in and lallygaged with the Greek slave a spell, and then the battle was lost, and "Sardine." said he might as well die for an old sheep as a lamb.

So he ordered a funeral pile built of red fire, and he got on it to be burned up. The Greek slave said if that was the game she wanted a hand dealt to her, as wherever "Sard." went she was going, as she had an insurance policy against fire in the Northwestern Mutual. So he invited her on to the kindling wood, and after hugging enough to last them through perdition--and mighty good hugging it was too--the pile of slabs was touched off, the flames rolled, and "Sard." and the Greek slave went down to h.e.l.l clasped in each other's embrace, and we went to the People's store and bought a mackerel and went home and told our wife we had been to a democratic caucus. We don't know what all the other fellows told their wives, but there has been a heap of lying, we know that much.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SARD." AND THE GREEK SLAVE.]

INSECURE ABODES.

Four men fell out of the Oshkosh jail the other day. If Oshkosh would only imitate Fond du lac, and paper the county jail with wall paper, it might become safe.

THE KNIGHT AND THE BRIDAL CHAMBER.

There was one of those things occurred at a Chicago hotel during the conclave that is so near a fight and yet so ridiculously laughable that you don't know whether you are on foot or a horseback. Of course some of the Knights in attendance were from the backwoods, and while they were well up in all the secret workings of the order, they were awful "new" in regard to city ways.

There was one Sir Knight from the Wisconsin pineries, who had never been to a large town before, and his freshness was the subject of remark. He was a large-hearted gentleman, and a friend that any person might be proud to have. But he _was_ fresh. He went to the Palmer House Tuesday night, after the big ball, tired nearly to death, and registered his name and called for a bed.

The clerk told him that he might have to sleep on a red lounge, in a room with two other parties, but that was the best that could be done. He said that was all right, he "had tried to sleep on one of them cots down to camp, but it nearly broke his back," and he would be mighty glad to strike a lounge. The clerk called a bell boy and said, "Show the gentleman to 253."

The boy took the Knight's keister and went to the elevator, the door opened and the Knight went in and began to pull off his coat, when he looked around and saw a woman on the plush upholstered seat of the elevator, leaning against the wall with her head on her hand. She was dressed in ball costume, with one of those white Oxford tie dresses cut low in the instep, which looked, in the mussed and bedraggled condition in which she had escaped from the exposition ball, very much to the Knight like a Knight s.h.i.+rt. The astonished pinery man stopped pulling off his coat and turned pale. He looked at the woman, then at the elevator boy, whom he supposed was the bridegroom, and said:

"By gaul, they told me I would have to sleep with a couple of other folks, but I had no idea that I should strike a wedding party in a cussed little bridal chamber not bigger than a hen coop. But there ain't nothing mean about me, only I swow it's pretty cramped quarters, ain't it, miss?" and he sat down on one end of the seat and put the toe of one boot against the calf of his leg, took hold of the heel with the other hand and began to pull it off.

"Sir!" says the lady, as she opened her eyes and began to take in the situation, and she jumped up and glared at the Knight as though she would eat him.

He stopped pulling on the boot heel, looked up at the woman, as she threw a loose shawl over her low neck shoulders, and said:

"Now don't take on. The book-keeper told me I could sleep on the lounge, but you can have it, and I will turn in on the floor. I ain't no hog.

Sometimes they think we are a little rough up in Wausau, but we always give the best places to the wimmen, and don't you forget it," and he began tugging on the boot again.