Peck's Sunshine Part 3

Some deacon tells a sinner all about the orthodox h.e.l.l, and the sinner does not know whether to believe him or not. The deacon may have lied to the sinner some time in a horse trade, or in selling him goods, and beat him, and how does he know but the same deacon is playing a brace game on him on the hereafter, or playing him for a sardine.

Now, if the people who advance these ideas of heaven or h.e.l.l, had a license to point to the moon, the nice, cool moon, as heaven, which would be plausible, to say the least, and say that it was heaven, and prove it, and could prove that the sun was the other place, which looks reasonable, according to all we have heard about 'tother place, the moon would be so full there would not be standing room, and they would have to turn republicans away, while the sun would be playing to empty benches, and there would only be a few editors there who got in on pa.s.ses.

Of course, during a cold winter, when the thermometer was forty or fifty degrees below zero, and everybody was blocked in, and coal was up to seventeen dollars a ton, the cause of religion would not prosper as much as it would in summer, because when you talked to a sinner about leading a different life or he would go to the sun, he would look at his coal pile and say that he didn't care a continental how soon he got there, but these discouragements would not be any greater than some that the truly good people have to contend with now, and the average the year round would be largely in favor of going to the moon.

The moon is very popular now, even, and if it is properly advertised as a celestial paradise, where only good people could get their work in, and where the wicked could not enter on any terms, there would be a great desire to take the straight and narrow way to the moon, and the path to the wicked sun would be grown over with sand burs, and scorched with lava, and few would care to take pa.s.sage by that route. Anyway, this thing is worth looking into.

UNs.c.r.e.w.i.n.g THE TOP OF A FRUIT JAR.

There is one thing that there should be a law pa.s.sed about, and that is, these gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 ap.r.o.n, and skins her nose on the dried pancake batter that is hidden in the folds of the ap.r.o.n.

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 gla.s.s 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 down 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 and 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 whenever 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 skin off the knuckle. He breathes a silent prayer and calls for the kerosene can, and pours a little of it 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 s.p.u.n.ky, when he glances at the rag on his thumb and asks if there is no liniment in the house. The preserving of fruit in gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s jar fruit can business is played out unless a scheme can be invented to get the top off.

b.u.t.tERMILK BIBBERS.

The immense consumption of b.u.t.termilk as a drink, retailed over the bars of saloons, has caused temperance people to rejoice. It is said that over two thousand gallons a day are sold in Milwaukee. There is one thing about b.u.t.termilk, in its favor, and that is, it does not intoxicate, and it takes the place of liquor as a beverage. A man may drink a quart of b.u.t.termilk, and while he may feel like a calf that has been sucking, and want to stand in a fence corner and bleat, or kick up his heels and run around a pasture, he does not become intoxicated and throw a beer keg through a saloon window.

Another thing, b.u.t.termilk does not cause the nose to become red, and the consumer's breath does not smell like the next day after a sangerfest.

The complexion of the nose of a b.u.t.termilk drinker a.s.sues a pale hue which is enchanting, and while his breath may smell like a baby that has nursed too much and got sour, the smell does not debar his entrance to a temperance society.

AN aeSTHETIC FEMALE CLUB BUSTED.

The organization of the "Cosmos" Club, of Chicago women, for the purpose of discussing "aesthetic" business, ancient poetry and pottery ware, calls to mind the attempt to organize such a club here in Milwaukee.

Our people here are too utterly full of business and domestic affairs to take to the "aesthetic" very generally, and the lady from Boston who tried to get up a cla.s.s in the new wrinkle went away considerably disgusted. She called about fifty of our splendidest ladies together at the residence of one of them, and told them what the ladies of Eastern cities were doing in the study of higher arts. She elaborated considerably on the study of Norwegian literature, ceramics, bric-a-brac and so forth, and asked for an expression of the ladies present. One lady said she was willing to go into anything that would tend to elevate the tone of society, and make women better qualified for helpmates to their husbands, but she didn't want any Norwegian literature in hers.

She said her husband ran for an office once and the whole gang of Norwegian voters went back on him and he was everlastingly scooped.

The Boston lady held up her hands in holy horror, and was going to explain to the speaker how she was off her base, when another lady got up and said she wanted to take the full course or nothing. She wanted to be posted in ancient literature and ceramics. She had studied ceramics some already, and had got a good deal of information. She had found that in case of whooping cough, goose oil rubbed on the throat and lungs was just as good as it was in case of croup, and she felt that with a good teacher any lady would learn much that would be of incalculable value, and she, for one, was going for the whole hog or none.

The Boston lady saved herself from fainting by fanning herself vigorously, and was about to show the two ladies that they had a wrong idea of aesthetics, when a lady from the West Side, who had just been married, got up and said she felt that we were all too ignorant of aesthetics, and they should take every opportunity to become better informed. She said when she first went to keeping house she couldn't tell baking powder that had alum in it from the pure article, and she had nearly ruined her husband's stomach before she learned anything.

And speaking of bric-a-brac, she felt that every lady should learn to economize, by occasionally serving a picked up dinner, of bric-a-brac that would otherwise be wasted.

The Boston lady found she could not speak understandingly, so she left-her chair and went around to the different groups of ladies, who were talking earnestly, to get them interested. The first group of four that she broke in on were talking of the best way to renovate seal-skin cloaks that had been moth eaten. One lady said that she had tried all the aesthetic insect powder that was advertised in the papers, and the moths would fairly get fat on it, and beg for more; but last spring she found out that moths were afraid of whisky.

Her husband worked in a wholesale whisky store, and his garments became saturated with the perfume, and you couldn't hire a moth to go near him.

So she got an empty whisky barrel and put in all her furs, and the moths never touched a thing. But she said the moths had a high old time all summer. They would get together in squads and go to the barrel and smell at the bung-hole, and lock arms and sashay around the room, staggering just as though there was an election, and about eleven o'clock they would walk up to a red spot in the carpet and take a lunch, just like men going to a saloon.

She said there was one drawback to the whisky barrel, as it gave her away when she first went out in company after taking her clothes out of the barrel. She wore her seal-skin cloak to the Good Templars' Lodge, the first night after taking it out, and they were going to turn her out of the Lodge on the ground that she had violated her obligation.

"You may talk about your Scandinavian literature," said she, turning to the Boston lady, "but when it comes to keeping moths out of furs, an empty whisky barrel knocks the everlasting socks off of anything I ever tried."

The Boston lady put on her aesthetic hat, and was about to take her leave, satisfied that she had struck the wrong crowd, when a sweet little woman, with pouting lips, called her aside. The Boston lady thought she had found at last one congenial soul, and she said:

"What is it, my dear?"

The little lady hesitated a moment, and with a tear in her eye she asked:

"Madam, can you tell me what is good for worms? Fido has acted for a week as though he was ill, and----"

That settled it. The Boston lady went away, and has never been heard of since.

"A young fellow and his girl went out sleighing yesterday, and the lad returned with a frozen ear. There is nothing very startling in the simple fact of a frozen ear, but the idea is that it was the ear next to the girl that he was foolish enough to let freeze."

A girl that will go out sleigh-riding with a young man and allow his ears to freeze, is no gentleman ("lady"??), and ought to be arrested.

Why, here in Milwaukee, on the coldest days, we have seen a young man out riding with a girl, and his ears were so hot they would fairly "sis," and there was not a man driving on the avenue but would have changed places with the young man, and allowed his ears to cool. Girls cannot sit too close during this weather. The climate is rigorous.

FOOLING WITH THE BIBLE.

Reports from the stationers show that there is no demand at all for the revised edition of the Bible, and had it not been for the newspapers publis.h.i.+ng the whole affair there would have been very few persons that took the trouble to even glance at it, and it is believed that not one reader of the daily papers in a hundred read any of the Bible, and not one in ten thousand read all of it which was published. Who originated this scheme of revising the Bible we do not know, but whoever it was made a miscue. There was no one suffering particularly for a revision of the Bible. It was good enough as it was. No literary sharp of the present day has got any license to change anything in the Bible.

Why, the cheeky ghouls have actually altered over the Lord's Prayer, cut it biased, and thrown the parts about giving us this day our daily bread into the rag bag. How do they know that the Lord said more than he wanted to in that prayer? He wanted that daily bread in there, or He never would have put it in. The only wonder is that those revisers did not insert strawberry shortcake and ice cream in place of daily bread.

Some of these ministers who are writing speeches for the Lord think they are smart. They have fooled with Christ's Sermon on the Mount until He couldn't tell it if He was to meet it in the Chicago _Times_.

This thing has gone on long enough, and we want a stop put to it. We have kept still about the piracy that has been going on in the Bible because people who are better than we are have seemed to endorse it, but now we are sick of it, and if there is going to be an annual clerical picnic to cut gashes in the Bible and stick new precepts and examples on where they will do the most hurt, we shall lock up our old Bible where the critters can't get at it, and throw the first book agent down stairs head first that tries to shove off on to us one of these new fangled, go-as-you-please Bibles, with all the modern improvements, and h.e.l.l left out.

Now, where was there a popular demand to have h.e.l.l left out of the Bible? Were there any pet.i.tions from the people sent up to this self-const.i.tuted legislature of pinchbeck ministers, praying to have h.e.l.l abolished, and "hades" inserted? Not a pet.i.tion. And what is this hades? Where is it? n.o.body knows. They have taken away our orthodox h.e.l.l, that has stood by us since we first went to Sunday school, and given us a hades. Half of us wouldn't know a hades if we should see it dead in the road, but they couldn't fool us any on h.e.l.l.

No, these revisers have done more harm to religion than they could have done by preaching all their lives. They have opened the ball, and now, every time a second-cla.s.s dominie gets out of a job, he is going to cut and slash into the Bible. He will think up lots of things that will sound better than some things that are in there, and by and by we shall have our Bibles as we do our almanacs, annually, with weather probabilities on the margins.

This is all wrong. Infidels will laugh at us, and say our old Bible is worn out, and out of style, and tell us to have our measure taken for a new one every fall and spring, as we do for our clothes. If this revision is a good thing, why won't another one be better? The woods are full of preachers who think they could go to work and improve the Bible, and if we don't shut down on this thing, they will take a hand in it. If a man hauls down the American flag, we shoot him on the spot; and now we suggest that if any man mutilates the Bible, we run an umbrella into him and spread it.

The old Bible just filled the bill, and we hope every new one that is printed will lay on the shelves and get sour. This revision of the Bible is believed to be the work of an incendiary. It is a scheme got up by British book publishers to make money out of pious people. It is on the same principle that speculators get up a corner on pork or wheat. They got revision, and printed Bibles enough to supply the world, and would not let out one for love or money. None were genuine unless the name of this British firm was blown in the bottle.

Millions of Bibles were s.h.i.+pped to this country by the firm that was "long" on Bibles, and they were to be thrown on the market suddenly, after being locked up and guarded by the police until the people were made hungry for Bibles.