Peck's Sunshine Part 20

THE ADVENT PREACHER AND THE BALLOON.

There occasionally occurs an incident in this world that will make a person laugh though the laughing may border on the sacrilegious. For instance, there is not a Christian but will smile at the ignorance of the Advent preacher up in Jackson county who, when he saw the balloon of King, the balloonist, going through the air, thought it was the second coming of Christ, and got down on his knees and shouted to King, who was throwing out a sand bag, while his companion was opening a bottle of export beer, "O, Jesus, do not pa.s.s me by."

And yet it is wrong to laugh at the poor man, who took an advertising agent for a Chicago clothing store for the Savior, who he supposed was making his second farewell tour. The minister had been preaching the second coming of Christ until he looked for Him every minute. He would have been as apt to think, living as he did in the back woods, that a fellow riding a bicycle, with his hair and legs parted in the middle, along the country road, was the object of his search.

We should pity the poor man for his ignorance, we who believe that when Christ _does_ come He will come in the old fas.h.i.+oned way, and not in a palace car, or straddle of the basket of a balloon. But we can't help wondering what the Adventist must have thought, when he appealed to his Savior, as he supposed, and the balloonist s.h.i.+ed a sand bag at him and the other fellow in the basket threw out a beer bottle and asked, "Where in ------ are we?"

The Adventist must have thought that the Savior of mankind was traveling in mighty queer company, or that He had taken the other fellow along as a frightful example. And what could the Adventist have thought when he saw a message thrown out of the balloon, and went with trembling limbs and beating heart to pick it up, believing that it was a command from on high to sinners, and found that it was nothing but a hand bill for a Chicago hand-me-down clothing store.

He must have come to the conclusion that the Son o Man had got pretty low down to take a job of bill posting for a reversible ulster and paper collar bazar. It must have been food for reflection for the Advent preacher, as he picked up the empty beer bottle, s.h.i.+ed at him from the chariot that he supposed carried to earth the redeemer of man. He must have wondered if some-Milwaukee brewer ad not gone to heaven and opened a brewery.

Of course we who are intelligent, and who would know a balloon if we saw it, would not have had any such thoughts, but we must remember that this poor Advent preacher thought that the day had come that had been promised so long, and that Christ was going to make a landing in a strong Republican county. We may laugh at the Adventist's disappointment that the balloon did not tie up to a stump and take him on board, but it was a serious matter to him.

He had been waiting for the wagon, full of hope, and when it came, and he saw the helmet on King's head and thought it was a crown of glory, his heart beat with joy, and he plead in piteous accents not to be pa.s.sed by, and the confounded gas bag went on and landed in a cranberry marsh, and the poor, foolish, weak, short-sighted man had to get in his work mighty lively to dodge the sand bags, beer bottles, and rolls of clothing store posters.

The Adventist would have been justified in renouncing his religion and joining the Democratic party. It is sad, indeed.

THE CAUSE OF RHEUMATISM.

One of the most remarkable things in medical science is a discovery recently made by a Philadelphia physician When so many hundreds of years pa.s.s over without any new discovery being made, and when one _is_ made, like vaccination, and they are not dead sure whether it amounts to anything or not, a new discovery that the discoverer will swear by is a big thing. This Philadelphia doctor has discovered that rheumatism is the direct result of cold feet.

There is no discovery that has ever been made in the human anatomy that stands to reason any more than this. Many thousands of men are going around crippled and bent with rheumatism, and suffering untold agonies, and they have never known what caused their bones to ache. Of course they knew that their wives had cold feet, but they had no idea that every time those No. 2 icicles were placed in the small of the back to get warm that they were sowing the seeds of rheumatism.

We presume there is a hundred pounds of male rheumatism to every square inch of cold female foot, and the Philadelphia doctor should be thanked by men of rheumatic tendencies as well as by women of arctic pedal extremities for this timely discovery. There is no woman who enjoys seeing her husband in the throes of rheumatic pains, and now that they know that their cold feet have brought about so much suffering, we trust they will try and lead a different life.

Of course we do not expect any woman is going to bed and leave her feet out on the floor, or under a coal stove. This could not be expected. But they can adopt some method to soften the rigors of a hard winter. They can paint their feet a nice warm color or have a summer sunset painted on the instep, or a fire-place on the bottom of their feet. Anything that will make their feet seem warm will be a relief to their rheumatic husbands. A pair of zinc overshoes to wear in bed would help some very cold feet several degrees.

Men are too valuable to be crippled up with rheumatism just for the temporary comfort they can confer upon their wives by allowing the small of their backs to be used in lieu of a grate fire. We trust that the cold footed portion of our female population will look at this matter in its true light, and if necessary leave their feet in the porter's room at bed time and get a check for them.

HOW A GROCERY MAN WAS MAIMED.

The shooting of the grocery man at Appleton, by the man to whom he presented a bill, reminds us of the only grocery man we ever maimed for presenting a bill. His name was Smith, and he lived at La Crosse. We presume there have been meaner men built than this man Smith was at that time, though how it could be possible we cannot see. We had run up quite a bill at his grocery, and were willing to keep trading right along, but somehow he got wormy, and said that this thing had to stop.

We told him we never traded with him because we wanted his goods, but just to give him the benefit of our society, and we pointed out to him the injury it would be to his business to have us quit trading at his store. We told him that people would think that he had cheated us, and they would not come there any more. He said he knew it would be pretty tough, but he would try and struggle along under it.

Well, there was no use arguing, and finally by helping him do his ch.o.r.es we got the bill all paid but a dollar and a half, and then he began his persecutions. He called us a baldheaded old catamaran. He would follow us into a saloon, when some one treated, and take our gla.s.s of beer, and say he would give us credit on account. He would catch our dog and propose to cut a piece of his tail off, and give us credit at so much an inch.

He would meet us coming out of church, and right before folks he would ask us to go down to the brewery and play pedro. He would say he would come up to our house for dinner some time, and everything wicked. One day we stopped at his store to enjoy his society, and eat crackers and cheese--for be it known we never took offence at him, in fact we sort of liked the old cuss--when he told us to take a seat and talk it over.

We sat down on a cracker box that had bees wax on it, and after a heated discussion on finances, found that we had melted about two pounds of wax on our trousers, and Smith insisted on charging it up to us. This was the last hair, and when he called us a diabolical, hot-headed guthoogen our warm southern blood began to boil. We seized a codfish that had been hanging in front of the store until it had become as hard and sharp as a cleaver, and we struck him.

The sharp edge of the codfish struck him on the second joint of the forefinger, and cut the finger off as clean as it could have been done with a razor.

He said that settled it, and he gave us a receipt in full, and ever afterwards we were firm friends.

One thing he insists on, even now, and that is in telling people who ask him how he lost his finger, that he wore it off rubbing out seven-up marks on a table while playing pedro.

He is now trying to lead a different life, being city clerk of La Crosse, but this article will remind him of old times, and he can remember with what an air of injured innocence we wiped the blood off that codfish and hung it up for a sign, and how Smith sold it the next day to Frank Hatch for a liver pad. No, thank you, we don't drink.

CAMP MEETING IN THE DARK OF THE MOON.

A Dartford man, who has been attending a camp meeting at that place, inquires of the Brandon _Times_ why it is that camp meetings are always held when the moon does not s.h.i.+ne. The _Times_ man gives it up, and refers the question to _The Sun_. We give it up.

It does not seem as though managers of camp meetings deliberately consult the almanac in order to pick out a week for camp meeting in the dark of the moon, though such meetings are always held when the moon is of no account. If they do, then there is a reason for it. It is well known that pickerel bite best in the dark of the moon, and it is barely possible that sinners "catch on" better at that time.

There may be something in the atmosphere, in the dark of the moon, that makes a camp meeting more enjoyable. Certainly brethren and sisterin'

can mingle as well if not better when there is no glaring moon to molest and make them afraid, and they can relate their experience as well as though it was too light.

The prayers of the righteous avail as much in the darkness of the closet as they do in an exposition building, with an electric light, and as long as sinners will do many things which they ought not to do, and undo many, things that they never ought to have done, the dark of the moon is probably the most healthy.

People don't want to be sunburnt in the night. It seems to us as though the work of converting could be done as well in a full moon, but statistics show that such is not the case, and we are willing to give the camp meeting attendants the benefit of the doubt.

Again, it may be that the moon is to blame. No one would blame the moon, if it was full, and looked down on an ordinary camp meeting, if it got sick at the stomach, staggered behind a cloud, turned pale and refused to come out until the camp meeting was pulled by the police.

ANOTHER VIEW OF THE CASK

A new face has been put on the killing of old Mr. Utley, in Green Lake county, by his son, since the son has made his statement. At the time the first news was received we felt inclined to lay it up against young Mr. Utley, as there is nothing that hurts our feelings worse than to hear that a boy in the first flush of manhood, when the pin feathers are just appearing on his upper jaw and when the world is all before him to conquer and lay at his feet, has deliberately shot six No. 40 calibre bullets into various places in the person of his venerable father, who has nurtured him from childhood, stored his mind with useful knowledge, or perchance played mumblety peg with a s.h.i.+ngle across the place where in later years another father may plant oblong pieces of leather, because of his habit of leaning his youthful stomach across the gate whereon swings a gentle maiden belonging to this other father, the while giving her glucose in regard to a beautiful castle that he will rear with his own hands on a commanding eminence, surrounded with vines and roses, into the golden portals of which he will usher her and empty into her lap the precious treasures of the orient, when the cuss knows that he will never be able to earn more than twelve s.h.i.+llings a day on a farm the longest day he lives, and that if she marries him she will have to take in stairs to scrub and cook liver over an oil stove, and wear the same dress she is married in till it will stand alone. We say that we are opposed to young men killing their fathers. It has never seemed right to us. But since the supplemental returns in this case are all in, and we learn that old Mr. Utley was a drunken bulldozer who would take the farm horses and go off to town on a three days' drunk, leaving the young man to do all the work, and come back complaining because the work was not done, and if the boy attempted to explain, he would be knocked down with a stick of cord wood, and that on this occasion he was engaged in trying to dissect young Utley with a butcher knife, claiming that he was going to hang his hide on the fence, and cut out his liver and stomach, and other things that Dr. Tanner has given a furlough, and that the young man shot his father just to keep peace in the family, and to save his own life, and that there were four quarts of raw whisky in the old man's panjandrum when he turned up his toes, we feel like apologizing to the young man and telling him that he did his country a great service in wiping out his sire, baby mine. When an old man gets so he can't enjoy himself without filling up with whisky and cutting slices off the livers of live people, the sooner he climbs the golden stair the better.

THE PIOUS DEACON AND THE WORLDLY COW.

One of those incidents that cause a pious man to d.a.m.n the whole animal creation occurred at Janesville last week. A business man that we all know, got up last Tuesday morning and took a walk down by Monterey, to view the beauties of nature and get up an appet.i.te for breakfast. He is a man who weighs close onto 150 pounds, though he is as kitteny as anybody when occasion calls for kittenishness.

Gazing into the crystal waters of Rock River, it occurred to him that he would take a bath, so he disrobed himself, laid his clothes upon the ground and plunged in. He had been sporting with the wavelets, and waving with the sportlets for some minutes, when he heard a bellowing on sh.o.r.e, and he looked up to see a cow pawing the ground and running her horns into his clothes. You know how the smell of blood or carrion will cause the mildest mannered cow to get on her ear and paw the ground and bellow. Not that there was any blood or carrion there, but the cow acted that way. She may have got the smell of a Democrat from his clothes.

Anyway she made Monterey howl, and the large man in the water dove down for stones to throw at the cow. She had run one horn through one leg of his pants, and the other horn through the broad part, and was engaged in chewing his s.h.i.+rt, when a rock struck her on the rump and she started off with those two garments for the blind asylum, where she evidently belonged, shaking her head to get the pants off her horns, and chewing the s.h.i.+rt as though it was a bran mash..

The pious man rushed out of the water towards the cow and said "co-boss, co-boss," but she took one look at his shape and turned away and didn't co-boss very much. A war map of the thoughts of this Janesville business man, as he saw the cow go away, would sell well, if it was ill.u.s.trated by a picture of a native Zulu picking buchu leaves. He said he was a pious man, and had always tried to lead a different life, and do the fair thing, but hereafter he would be blanked if he wouldn't kill every blanked cow that he came across.

The only things the cow had left were his hat, vest and shoes and stockings. He put them on and started after the cow. The vest was one of these grandfather's clock vests, that stop short, never to go again, a sort of emigrant vest, that comes high. It was not a long, lingering, emotional vest; it was not what would be called a charitable vest, because charity begins at home, and covers a mult.i.tude of back pay into the treasury. He tried to remember some of the ten commandments, to repeat, but the only one he could call to mind was "Pull down Thy Vest."

His eyes swept the horizon to see if anybody was looking, and he could see that the grounds about the blind asylum were alive with people of both s.e.xes. He thanked heaven that by the inscrutable ways of Providence, people were made blind, but his joy at the calamity was mingled with sorrow when he thought that the teachers at the asylum were endowed with the most perfect eyesight.

As the cow neared the gate of the grounds he made one effort to head her off, but she run by him, and then he attempted to take his pistol from the hind pocket of his pants to kill himself, when he realized again that he was indeed barefooted from his vest to his stockings, and he sat down under a tree to die of slow starvation, but before he began to starve he got up again and resumed an upright att.i.tude, on account of ants. It is a picnic for a nest of ants to partake of a human being who has lost his or her trousers, as the case may be, and he followed the cow, saying "co-boss" in the most pitiful accents that were ever used by a Janesville man.