Peck's Sunshine Part 8

The doctor got out his pill-bags and made some quinine powders, and gave her some medicine in two tumblers, to be taken alternately, and told her to soak her feet and go to bed, and put a hot mustard poultice on her chest, and some onions around her neck.

She was mad, and flared right up, and said she wasn't very well posted, and lived in the country, but if she knew her own heart she would not play such a trick as that on a new husband.

The doctor got mad, and asked her if she thought he didn't understand his business; and he was about to go and let her die, when the bridegroom came in and told him to go ahead with the marrying. The doc said that altered the case. He said next time he came he should know what to bring, and then she blushed, and told him he was an old fool anyway, but he p.r.o.nounced them man and wife, and said the prescription would be five dollars, the same as though there had been somebody sick.

But the doc had cheek. Just as he was leaving he asked the bridegroom if he didn't want to ride up to Ashland with him, it was only eighteen miles, and the ride would be lonesome, but the bride said not if the court knew herself, and the bridegroom said now he was there he guessed he would stay. He said he didn't care much about going to Ashland anyway.

THE DIFFERENCE IN HORSES.

There has been a great change in livery horses within the last twenty years. Years ago, if a young fellow wanted to take his girl out riding, and expected to enjoy himself, he had to hire an old horse, the worst in the livery stable, that would drive itself, or he never could get his arm around his girl to save him. If he took a decent looking team, to to put on style, he had to hang on to the lines with both hands, and if he even took his eyes off the team to look at the suffering girl beside him, with his mouth, the chances were that the team would jump over a ditch, or run away, at the concussion. Riding out with girls was shorn of much of its pleasure in those days.

We knew a young man that was going to put one arm around his girl if he did not lay up a cent, and it cost him over three hundred dollars. The team ran away, the buggy was wrecked, one horse was killed, the girl had her hind leg broken, and the girl's father kicked the young man all over the orchard, and broke the mainspring of his watch.

It got so that the livery rig a young man drove was an index to his thoughts. If he had a stylish team that was right up on the bit, and full of vinegar, and he braced himself and pulled for all that was out, and the girl sat back in the corner of the buggy, looking as though she should faint away if a horse got his tail over a line, then people said that couple was all right, and there was no danger that they would be on familiar terms.

But if they started out with a slow old horse that looked as though all he wanted was to be left alone, however innocent the party might look, people knew just as well as though they had seen it, that when they got out on the road, or when night came on, that fellow's arm would steal around her waist, and she would snug up to him, and--Oh, pshaw, you have heard it before.

Well, late years the livery men have "got onto the racket," as they say at the church sociables. They have found that horses that know their business are in demand, and so horses are trained for this purpose They are trained on purpose for out door sparking. It is not an uncommon thing to see a young fellow drive up to the house where his girl lives with a team that is just tearing things. They prance, and champ the bit, and the young man seems to pull on them as though his liver was coming out. The horses will hardly stand still long enough for the girl to get in, and then they start off and seem to split the air wide open, and the neighbors say, "Them children will get all smashed up one of these days."

The girl's mother and father see the team start, and their minds experience a relief as they reflect that "as long as John drives that frisky team there can't be no hugging a going on." The girl's older sister sighs and says, "That's so," and goes to her room and laughs right out loud.

It would be instructive to the scientists to watch that team for a few miles. The horses fairly foam, before they get out of town, but striking the country road, the fiery steeds come down to a walk, and they mope along as though they had always worked on a hea.r.s.e. The shady woods are reached, and the carriage scarcely moves, and the horses seem to be walking in their sleep. The lines are loose on the dash board, and the left arm of the driver is around the pretty girl, and they are talking low. It is not necessary to talk loud, as they are so near each other that the faintest whisper can be heard.

But a change comes over them. A carriage appears in front, coming towards them. It may be some one that knows them. The young man picks up the lines, and the horses are in the air, and as they pa.s.s the other carriage it almost seems as though the team is running away, and the girl that was in sweet repose a moment before acts as though she wanted to get out. After pa.s.sing the intruder the walk and conversation are continued.

If you meet the party on the Whitefish Bay road at 10 o'clock at night, the horses are walking as quietly as oxen, and they never wake up until coming into town, and then he pulls up the team and drives through town like a cyclone, and when he drives up to the house the old man is on the steps, and he thinks John must be awful tired trying to hold that team.

And he is.

It is thought by some that horses have no intelligence, but a team that knows enough to take in a sporadic case of buggy sparking has got sense.

These teams come high, but the boys have to have them.

ADDICTED TO LIMBURG CHEESE.

During the investigation of Chief Kennedy one witness testified to something that ought to make it hot for the chief. When men stoop to do the things that Mr. Chapin testified to, an outraged public sentiment has got to step in. Mr. Chapin testified--and he is a man whose word is as good as our note--he said he met Kennedy in a street car, and his breath smelled of limburg cheese. That is enough. Carry his remains out.

Any man who will appear in a public place, among folks, with his breath smelling of limburg cheese, has got his opinion of us. It is simply d.a.m.nable. We can see how a man who likes limburg cheese is liable, though he may have sworn off, to return to the mustard cup, and after the first taste, fill his skin full of cheese, arguing that one may as well die for an old sheep as a lamb.

It is a well known fact, agreed to by all scientists, that a single mouthful' will tarnish an otherwise virtuous breath as much as a whole cheese. One mouthful of cheese leads on to another, and we are prepared to believe that if the chief smelled of cheese at all, he was full of it.

Men cannot be too careful of cheese. If a man feels that he is going to commit the dastardly act of eating limburg cheese, he has time to go out to a glue factory, or a slaughter house, or the house of correction, or some other place whose offense is rank.

The desire to eat cheese does not come upon a man suddenly, like the desire to take a drink, or stand off a creditor, and he is not taken possession of by the demon of appet.i.te and pulled to the nearest saloon by a forty horse power devil, as is the man who has the jim jams.

The cheese does its work more quietly. It whispers to him about 11 o'clock a. m., and says there is nothing like cheese. He stands it off, and again in the afternoon the cheese takes possession of him and leads him on step by step, by green fields, and yet he does not fall. But about 9 o'clock p. m. the air seems full of cheese, and he smells it wherever he goes, and finally, after resisting for ten hours, he goes and orders a cheese sandwich.

Now, when the feeling first comes on, and he shuts his eyes and imagines he sees limburg cheese, if the victim would go and buy a slice and go away out in the country, by the fertilizer factory, he could eat his cheese and no one but the workmen in the fertilizer factory could complain. That is what ought to be done when a man is addicted to cheese.

But this chief of police has stood up in the face of public opinion, eaten limburg cheese with brazen effrontery that would do credit to a lawyer, and has gone into a public conveyance, breathing pestilence and cheese. There is no law on our statute books that is adequate to punish a man who will thus trample upon the usages of society.

However, the conviction of Kennedy of eating limburg cheese will be the means of acquitting him of the other charge, that of conversing with a lewd woman. We doubt if there is a lewd woman, though she be terribly lewd, who would allow a man to come within several blocks of her who had been eating that deceased cheese.

If we were in Kennedy's place we would admit the cheese, and then bring ten thousand women to swear whether they would remain in the same room with a man who had been eating that cheese. There are men who _do_ eat cheese, bad men, the wicked cla.s.ses, who go into the presence of females, but that is one thing which causes so many suicides among the poor fallen girls. When we hear that another naughty but nice looking girl has been filling her skin full of paregoric and is standing off a doctor with a stomach pump, we instinctively feel as though some man with a smell of cheese about his garments had been paying attention to her, and she had become desperate.

If they discharge the chief on that cheese testimony it will be a lesson to all men hereafter.

TERRIBLE TIME ON THE CARS.

There is something about the average Chicago young man that gives him away, and gives away anybody that gets in with him. He is full of practical jokes, and is a bad egg on general principles.

Last week Mr. Eppenetus Hoyt, of Fond du Lac, went to Chicago on a visit. He is a pious gentleman, whose candor would carry conviction to the mind of the seeker after righteousness, and his presence at the prayer meeting, at the sociable or the horse-race, is an evidence that everything will be conducted on the square.

Mr. Hoyt knew a young man named Johnny Darling, who was attending Rush Medical College, and through him was permitted to visit the dissecting-room, and gaze upon the missionary work being done there. Mr.

Hoyt was introduced to a number of the wicked young men who were carving the late lamented, and after he got accustomed to the climate he rather enjoyed the performance.

Whether young Mr. Darling told the boys that Mr. Hoyt was "fresh" or not, will, perhaps, never be known; but, as Mr. Hoyt pa.s.sed around among the slabs where they were at work, each made a contribution from the "stiff" he was at work upon to Mr. Hoyt's coat pockets unbeknown to him.

While one was calling his attention to a limb that he was dissecting, another would cut off an ear, or a finger, or a nose, or dig out an eye, and drop the same into Mr. Hoyt's overcoat pockets. Finally, he bid the boys good-bye, thanked them for their courtesies in showing him around, told them if they ever came to Fond du Lac his pew in church was at their disposal, and he skipped for the train and got on board.

The seats were all occupied, and a middle aged lady, with a slim face and spectacles, and evidently an old maid, allowed him to sit beside her. The car was warm, and it was not long before the "remains" began to be heard from. He was talking to the lady about the "sweet by-and-by,"

and the hope of a glorious immortality beyond the grave, and of the inducements held out by the good book to those who try to lead a different life here on earth, when he smelled something. The lady had been smelling it for some miles back, and she had got her eye on Mr.

Hoyt, and had put her handkerchief to her nose. He took a long breath and said to the lady:

"The air seems sort o' fixed here in this car, does it not?" and he looked up at the transom.

"Yes," said the lady, as she turned pale, and asked him to let her out of the seat, "it is very much fixed, and I believe _that you are the man that fixed it!_" and she took her satchel and went to the rear of the car, where she glared at him as though he was a fat rendering establishment.

Mr. Hoyt devoted a few moments to silent prayer, and then his attention was called to a new married couple, in the seat ahead of him. They had been having their heads close together, when suddenly the bride said:

"Hennery, have you been drinking?"

He vowed by all that was great and glorious that he had not, when she told him there was something about his breath that reminded her of strong drink, or a packing-house.

He allowed that it was not him, but admitted that he had noticed there was something wrong, though he didn't know but it was some of her teeth that needed filling.

They were both mad at the insinuations of the other, and the bride leaned on the window and cried, while the groom looked the other way, and acted cross.

Mr. Hoyt was very much annoyed at the smell.

The smell remained, and people all around him got up and went to the forward end of the car, or to the rear, and there were a dozen empty seats when the conductor came in, and lots of people standing up. The conductor got one sniff, and said:

"Whoever has got that piece of limberger cheese in his pocket, will have to go in the emigrant car!"