Then they both said something about the general incapacity of a man,
and Mr. Baringer endeavored to explain that in going across the room
for the tack hammer he had caught his foot in the edge of the carpet,
with the result as above. And at the conclusion of his explanation,
Mrs. Baringer’s mother gave a sniff that blew dust out of the carpet,
and there was a general expression of incredulity on the faces of the
congregation.
It was a long time before they got the carpets down in the yard, and
on the line. Then Mr. Baringer approached and smote the first carpet
with a long stick, and the next instant he was feeling his way out of
a dense cloud of dust, coughing, sneezing and snorting, and wildly
gasping for air. He went around on the other side, and as he aimed
a terrific swipe at the carpet, he struck the clothes-prop, and his
nerveless arm stung and tingled to his neck, while his wail was heard
down to the city building. Then he got at it again, and found that his
stick was too light, and he took another one. A few strokes sufficed
to convince him that it was too heavy, and he took a lath. That broke
in two at the first blow, and he tried an apple switch, but it was too
limber. He finally gave up the idea of beating any more, and called to
Mrs. Baringer that the carpet was ready to be shaken. Mrs. Baringer,
with her head in an apron, came out. They gathered the carpet, and Mr.
Baringer got the start of her and shook a roll clear down to her hands,
exploding in a loud snap and a volcano of dust in her face. Then she
dropped the carpet and sneezed and protested.
“You shook too quick, deary,” she said.
“But you said you were ready, sweety,” replied Mr. Baringer.
“But you shouldn’t be so rough, lovey,” she protested.
“Well, I have to shake hard to get the dust out, ducky,” he insisted.
“Well, you needn’t be so cross about it, deary,” she said.
“Oh well,” he said, “you must expect hard work house-cleaning days, and
you mustn’t lose your temper, sweety.”
“It isn’t me that gets cross and jerks people around, lovey,” she said,
“it’s you.”
“I never jerked you around,” he retorted.
“Why, Aristarchus Baringer!” exclaimed his wife, making very large eyes
at him and speaking in tones of the greatest amazement, “and maybe you
didn’t tear the carpet up stairs, either.”
“I wish your old carpet was in Halifax,” he said, savagely. “Pick up
that end; let’s get through with it. This is sweet work for a dry goods
salesman, anyhow! Ready?”
“No,” she snapped, “I ain’t ready. Now wait. There. Hold on now; don’t
be in such a hurry. Now!”
And the next instant the carpet was snapped out of her hands, and it
did seem as though her fingers had gone with it, while Mr. Baringer,
pretending not to know that it had fallen from her fingers, kept on
shaking violently at his end, filling the air with dust and grit. At
this juncture Mrs. Baringer’s mother, who had been a quiet spectator of
the carpet shaking scene, approached and called him to desist. Then she
gathered up the vacant end of the carpet.
“Aristarchus,” she said kindly but firmly, “Olivia is not strong enough
for such work.”
Then she added:
“Have you got a good hold, Aristarchus?”
And Mr. Baringer said he had.
“Don’t let go then, Aristarchus. Ready.”
They lifted their arms high in the air and Mr. Baringer is undecided
yet which part of him started first. He walked up the whole length of
that carpet on his hands and then he fell over the edge and banged
along the walk on his hands and knees until he reached the front
fence, through which he plunged his head, and would have gone on
through but for his shoulder catching against the gate post. The
carpets did not go down that day, and a big Irishman was engaged to
come and welt the fuzz off them, Mr. Baringer having privately and with
some asperity informed his wife that he would rather live, sleep, and
eat in dirt up to his eyes, than ever again to sweep, beat, or shake
the lightest carpet ever trodden by the foot of man.
AN AUTUMNAL REVERIE.
“Oh dreamy haze: veiling the murmuring river that stretches away like
a silver thread under a mosquito bar, winding in wooded nooks and
creeping through low lying islands where the balmy breeze is redolent
with the odor of dead leaves and dead fish. Oh lovely haze; what dreams
of soulful tenderness its name recalls. Oh, musty hays in the street
car; oh, hays that used to be full of bumble bees; oh, hazel nuts
on another man’s farm with a big dog hid in the patch. Away; these
memories are too painful.
“Afar, the hillsides glitter in gold and scarlet, and the sumach
bushes, climbing the slope with their nodding plumes, look like a new
express wagon coming down Division Street. The mellow air brings into
the city the rustle of fallen leaves piled deep on winding cow-paths,
threading through quiet dells and winding along the side of purling
brooks. It brings an odor of something old. Because it blows over the
cheese factory.
“How faint and far off every sound. The ghosts of the dead Summer
flowers sigh in every breeze, and the phantom of the cow that butted
the freight train tinkles her drowsy bell afar. And in muffled
tenderness, as a falling star might drop on a feather bed, we hear the
teamster’s cheery call, ‘G’up! ye lop-eared spavin, ’r I’ll lam the
hair off ye with a dray pin.’ And the muffled creak of the wood wagon
falls plaintively on the ear. Eight dollars a cord, and only cut three
feet long at that, and piled so loosely that when you go to measure it
you can throw a felt hat through the pile any place and never touch a
stick.
“List to the plaintive piping of the quail in the stubble. Ah, quail on
toast, and the plaintive piping of the anxious waiter for seventy-five
cents. Avaunt, dull dotard, take thy black shadow from the fairy scene.
(This remark was addressed to the waiter, and not to the quail on
toast.)
“Why, in these dreamy dark autumnal days--we don’t know what kind of a
day a dark day is, but we wanted another word that begins with d and
could only think of dark and another one, and the other one wouldn’t
do at all; these kind of days then, bring with them a sad--a sad--sad
something, we knew what it was when we started out, but stopping to
explain about that dark knocked it clear out of our head; sad--it isn’t
saddle, nor Sadducee, nor--ah yes, now we have it. These dreamy days,
that come like a tender poem, veiled in the delicate drapery that hangs
over the distant landscape, bring with them----”
At this critical juncture a man with a business-like look in his eye
burst into the sanctum, slapped his hat down on the paste-cup, banged
a sample case on the ink-stand, and proceeded to remark in one long
unpunctuated sentence, “Good morning not a word my dear fellow I
know the value of an editor’s time I wish you just to glance at this
prospectus of the most valuable work that has ever been issued from
the American press it is the American Centennial Portrait Gallery and
you will observe contains exquisite steel engravings full page of all
the Presidents with the autograph of each one appended and complete
biographical sketches. Observe that engraving of Washington through
this glass if you please bank note engraving not more perfect not a
single line crosses or becomes merged into another one what expression
what fidelity to nature what marvelous portraiture what minute
attention to detail. Notice the folds in the cloak and the exquisitely
penciled pattern of the ruffles at the wrists. And so with Adams and
Jefferson and Madison and Monroe and Jackson and all the rest of them
with biographical sketches compiled from the best authorities with
facts incidents and reminiscences never before published--a book that
no American of intelligence should be without a book without a rival in
its field of patriotic biographical excellence. In different styles of
binding--$3.00, $3.50 and $4.25. Now, sir, shall I have your name right
here?”
We felt all around the room before we could catch our breath, and when
we regained it we told him we didn’t believe we could put $4.25 worth
of signature anywhere that morning, and, after a struggle of fifteen
or twenty minutes with him, we got him close enough to the stairway
to push him over the railing and heard him reach the ground floor
and disappear into the street and around the corner with the long
introductory sentence of his prospectus trailing after him like the
dribbling shower of a runaway street sprinkler. And we went on with the
dreamy, sad, sweet reverie:
“The tender song of a day whose wordless beauties haunt the mystic
scene; the dreamy, vague, imperfect memories that bring----”
A man with a black coat and a high hat came softly into the sanctum,
and after he laid a flat oil cloth case on the table, he lifted his
hat off with both hands and said, speaking in soft and distressingly
deliberate tones, and articulating with awful distinctness and
precision:
“Ah--is the editor in?”
We imparted the desired information, and the deliberate man went on,
“I have taken the liberty to call on a matter of some importance to
yourself, as well as to the great masses of the American people. I have
here the artist’s proof of a new ker-romo entitled ‘Columbia.’ It is a
centennial allegory, and is designed by Mr. Alfred Reynolds Vincenzo
Fitzdaub, one of the most eminent artists of America, at immense outlay
of time, labor and money. The tube colors used on the original painting
alone cost seven dollars and a half, while the can-vas, when prepared
and stretched for the pict-ewer, was worth nearly doub-bel that sum.
Here you see, we have in the foreground Columbia, her sandaled feet
resting upon the broking canning to signify that war is no more. At her
right hand sits the American eagil, ger-rasping the olive ber-ranch of
peace in his talents, and lifting his wings as though pluming himself
for fe-light. Here on the left we have the artisin in working-dress,
the statesman, the teacher, the farmer, the sai-leure, repperesenting
the various callings, and here rushes a train of cars, while in the
background an old-fashioned stage coach is disappearing, illustrative
of the perrogeress of the past hundred years. The original painting
is valued at $2,500, but these ker-romos we supply for $18 a piece,
mounted ready for framing. No man of culture or artistic taste can
afford to be without this ker-romo. The eye of a connoisseur can not
distinguish it ferrom an oil painting. Observe the transparency of the
atmosphere; notice the soft natural blending of the high light and
middle tint into the hazy shadows of the backger-round, and the bold
effects of the heavy cul-louds that overshadow the past, where the dim
edges are silvered with the sunlight that ber-reaks ferrom the veil of
the few-chewer. And here, you observe, is a blank tablet at the right
of the figewer of Columbia, for a family record. Only eighteen dollars.
They will be ready for delivery about the first of Jewen, and if I may
have the pleasure of seeing your signature in this book, just here, it
will cost you but the trifling sum of eighteen dollars, and establish
more fully the reputation you have already acquired as a man of culture
and refined taste.”
We got rid of him after a heated session of about half an hour, and
he went away, mourning over the depravity of a man who had acquired a
reputation for culture and refined taste under false pretenses. Then we
resumed:
“Over the distant hills, hushed in the misty haze that hangs like a
veil of peace over the motionless landscape, the fleecy clouds, like
drifting air-ships on the broad expanse of melting blue, bring the
sweet----”
A man with a mahogany box came in and sat down, and talked as he opened
it, and displayed a variety of phials and boxes.
“The profession of literature, my dear sir,” he said, “is of all others
under the ban of the fell destroyer, dyspepsia, and it is especially
in the Spring of the year that literary workers suffer most keenly
from its dreadful effects. An ounce of prevention, etc.--you know the
old saying. Now I can see by your heavy eyes that you are at this
moment suffering from headache. This ‘Centennial Cordial and American
Indian Aboriginal Invigorator’ is one of the latest and most valuable
discoveries in the world of medical science, and has positively no
equal for the cure of jaundice and all manner of liver disorders,
headache, indigestion, want of appetite, dyspepsia, bilious, remittent
and intermittent fevers, ague, giddiness of the head, rheumatic
affections, poverty or impurity of the blood, salt rheum, teething,
cholera morbus, croup, ophthalmia, asthma, hay fever, sea-sickness,
diphtheria, catarrh, toothache, sleeplessness, gray hair, pimples, tan
and freckles, kleptomania, emotional insanity, growing pains, stone
bruise, rattlesnake bites, jimjams, katzenjammer, tight boots, bad
breath, warts, soft corns, old clothes, tailor’s bills, spring fever
and all other ills to which human flesh is heir. Compounded purely of
herbs and the finest cologne spirits, and selling at the ridiculously
low price of $1.75 per bottle. Now sir, let me----”
And we let him out of the door and he went away, after marking us for
the tomb in a few short weeks. And then we tried to get back to our
reverie.
“The sweet days come and go, in hallowed rhythmic cadences, like the
half forgotten chords of some tender, sobbing nocturne, while they
bring the----”
“No, sir, this is not the tobacco factory; it’s the next building up
the street.--Thank heaven, he’s gone.”
“----bring the sad yearning of a restless heart, that reaches out amid
the hectic flushes of the dying year, as it would clasp the----”
“No ma’am, we don’t want to buy ‘The Centennial Gift Book for Young
Ladies;’ no, we have no young lady friends; we have no friends of any
kind; we have no sisters, or brothers, or relations, we have no money,
we have no literary taste, we have no desire to read anything; we
can’t read, and we don’t know anybody who can.”
“----amid the hectic flushes of the dying year, as it would clasp----”
“Have no use for a fly trap, sir; don’t keep house; ain’t married;
don’t expect to be; haven’t seen a fly in Iowa for a thousand years.”
“----the hectic flushes of the dying year, as though----”
“No, no, no! this is not the barber-shop. No, we don’t know where the
barber-shop is; there is none in this block; there are no barbers in
Burlington; the nearest barber-shop is at the North Pole. No, sir, you
needn’t apologize, we are _not_ annoyed. _Good_ afternoon, sir.”
“----amid the dying flushes of the hectic year whose pulses throb so
faintly that----”
“No, we don’t want any ‘Wonderful Saponifier and Dirt Eradicator for
the Toilet and Laundry.’ No, we have no family, and we never wash;
never heard of such a thing as a bath; don’t want to be clean; never
shave, never clean our nails, and have on the same shirt we wore the
day we were born. No, sir. Yes, sir. _Good_ afternoon.”
“----amid the flying dushes of the pulsing year whose hectics faint so
throbly that----”
“Yes, sir, this is _The Hawkeye_ office. No, sir, we do not buy sand;
no, we have no old clothes to exchange for tin ware; no, we don’t want
any superior stove blacking. _Good_ afternoon, sir.”
“----amid the dusting fishes of the throbling hectics whose painted ear
is throoming in the gulch, so faintly fleam the glib and----”
[Note by the editor. We entered the office at this point and found
the writer of the above in convulsions. From the ravings of his
delirium we gathered that he was trying to write something nice, and
was tormented by innumerable interruptions. Medical assistants were
summoned, and we were told to keep the young man’s head cool and he
would get well. So we cut it off and had it packed in ice. It weighed
two and a half ounces. The young man is doing finely, and will not need
it again this year.]
INFANTILE SCINTILLATIONS.
Ah yes, we do love children. We fairly dote on them, and enjoy and
admire their sweet, innocent ways, from the dear little cloudy-faced,
bare-legged cherubs that swear and throw stones at you as you go past
Happy Hollow, to the sweet-faced but pampered angel that sits in the
golden lap of luxury and breaks the mirrors and your head with pa’s
cane. It was purely our love for the little innocents that induced
us to comply with the urgent request of many parents, and open a
department in _The Hawkeye_ for the smart sayings of precocious
children.
Mrs. H--y B--k, of North Hill, has a sweet little rosebud, of four
bright Summers, who came into the house and lisped, “Ma, Ith tho
theepy.”
“What makes you sleepy?” asked Rosebud’s mother.
“I don’t know,” murmured the child.
Strange yearning after the incomprehensible in an infant heart. Could
any of the children of an older growth have made a better answer?
Then there is little Freddy L----, out on West Hill. Although he is
but three years old, he put his father’s watch in the shaving mug,
filled the mug out of a kerosene lamp, and set the mixture in the oven
to dry, where it presently dried--soon after the hired girl made up
the breakfast fire--with such abruptness that three of the stoveplates
haven’t been found since. After the excitement had subsided, his mother
took him on her lap and said:
“Freddy, did you put papa’s watch and the mug full of oil in the oven?”
And the dear child, opening wide his innocent eyes, and smiling in
tender confidence in her face, said placidly:
“No, ma’am, ’deed I didn’t.”
Sweet, cautious instinct of an untried heart. Could any of us get out
of it any better than that? Who can tell what vague, uncertain dreams
of congressional honors float through that busy little mind?
Johnnie K---- is a charming little cherub of four bright Springs.
One day he poured the ink into the globe where the gold-fish were,
submerging them instantaneously in total eclipse; then he put the Bible
in the fire, threw a bronze paper-weight through the looking-glass,
broke four eggs in his sister’s new hat, and wound up his artless sport
by throwing the cat down the cistern. His mother, discovering all this
mischief, suspected who was the author, and sought her son.
“Johnnie,” she said, sadly, “Why did you act so naughty?”
“I didn’t,” he persisted. “Deed, muzzy, it was ze cat!”
Sweet child! Does it need the prescience of a prophet to see that he
will some day make an excellent witness in a great scandal case?
Then there is another sweet little tid-toddler out on Seventh Street.
The other day one of his parents, the female one, put him to sleep and
laid him in his little crib, and then she ran over the street to ask
Mrs. Muldoon how she washed flannels, and got to talking about the last
funeral, and the mission circle, and the new preacher, and forgot all
about the baby, and when she went home there that dear little blessed
was, flat on his back, with his little crib lying on top of him, and he
yelling like a scalded pig.
Ah, the wild, weird, ventures and dreams of child life. Try it,
gray-haired man; see if you can fall out of bed and flop your
bedstead, slats, springs, mattress and all, on top of you as you land
on the floor. You can not do it, but the tid-toddler of three sweet
Summers--ah, well, who shall say how their untried instinct shames the
lore and knowledge of our elder years.
SETTLING UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
Strangers visiting the beautiful city of Burlington have not failed to
notice that one of the handsomest young men they meet is very bald, and
they fall into the usual error of attributing this premature baldness
to dissipation. But such is not the case. This young man, one of the
most exemplary Bible-class scholars in the city, went to a Baptist
sociable out on West Hill one night about two years ago. He escorted
three charming girls, with angelic countenances and human appetites,
out to the refreshment table, let them eat all they wanted, and then
found he had left his pocket-book at home, and a deaf man that he had
never seen before at the cashier’s desk. The young man, with his face
aflame, bent down and said softly,
“I am ashamed to say I have no change with----”
“Hey?” shouted the cashier.
“I regret to say,” the young man repeated on a little louder key, “that
I have unfortunately come away without any change to----”
“Change two?” chirped the old man, “Oh, yes, I can change five if you
want it.”
“No,” the young man explained in a terrible, penetrating whisper, for
half a dozen people were crowding up behind him, impatient to pay their
bills and get away, “I don’t want any change, because----”
“Oh, don’t want no change?” the deaf man cried, gleefully. “’Bleeged to
ye, ’bleeged to ye. ’Taint often we get such generous donations. Pass
over your bill.”
“No, no,” the young man explained, “I have no funds----”
“Oh, yes, plenty of fun,” the deaf man replied, growing tired of the
conversation and noticing the long line of people waiting with money in
their hands, “but I haven’t got time to talk about it now. Settle and
move on.”
“But,” the young man gasped out, “I have no money----”
“Go Monday?” queried the deaf cashier. “I don’t care when you go; you
must pay and let these other people come up.”
“I have no money!” the mortified young man shouted, ready to sink into
the earth, while the people all around him, and especially the three
girls he had treated, were giggling and chuckling audibly.
“Owe money?” the cashier said, “of course you do; $2.75.”
“I can’t pay!” the youth screamed, and by turning his pocket inside out
and yelling his poverty to the heavens, he finally made the deaf man
understand. And then he had to shriek his full name three times, while
his ears fairly rang with the half-stifled laughter that was breaking
out all around him; and he had to scream out where he worked, and roar
when he would pay, and he couldn’t get the deaf man to understand him
until some of the church members came up to see what the uproar was,
and recognizing their young friend, made it all right with the cashier.
And the young man went out into the night and clubbed himself, and
shred his locks away until he was bald as an egg.
HAWK-EYETEMS.
SOMEBODY told Billinger that stamps were not required on notes, and
Billinger, overjoyed, asked the crowd to drink, and said he pitied old
Gunnybags who had been trying for six months to get the stamps on a
note he holds against Billinger. Billinger says he knew he would get
the law on the old gouge if he held on long enough.
* * * * *
“PULL out, Bill!” shrieked an engineer’s son to one of his playmates,
a brakeman’s boy, who was in imminent danger of getting smashed by his
mother, who was coming after him, “Git on the main line and give her
steam! Here comes the switch engine!” But before the juvenile could get
in motion, she had him by the ear, and he was laid up with a hot box.
* * * * *
A NORTH HILL man refused to give his boy thirty-five cents to go to the
minstrels, because the entertainment was demoralizing and vulgar in
its nature. He then bought a quarter’s worth of chewing tobacco, went
home and read the _Weekly Moral Guide and Guardian_, and spit all over
the front of the stove, and made the parlor smell so much like a stale
bar-room that the baby had three whisky fits before ten o’clock.
* * * * *
A YOUNG editor out in Floyd County, gushing over his first, asks, “Did
you ever watch a dear little baby waking from its morning nap?” N-not
exactly; but we have watched a dear little baby’s fond pa gliding up
and down the fireless room, trying to induce the dear little baby to
take a morning nap, at 2:15 A. M.--pressing offers but no takers--which
was about as much fun as it can be to see the baby wake.
* * * * *
A MAN out on Summer Street has eight daughters, and when they cleaned
house last Spring, the woman raked 9,724 quids of chewing gum down
from the window casings, chair backs, door panels and sofa backs, the
accumulation of the past Winter. And this does not include the wads
which the man, at various times sat down on and carried away on the
tails of his coat, for which no accurate returns have been made.
* * * * *
OLD Middlerib came home one night and ordered a light lunch before
going to bed. “Just a mouthful of tea and a bit of bread,” he
explained. “Do you want just plain bread?” asked Mrs. M., with
reference to the presence or absence of butter. And the old reprobate
said he would take one piece plain, and the other with a looped
overskirt, shirred down the gores with the same, and held in place with
knife pleatings of grape jelly. He got the heel of the loaf.
* * * * *
EVERYBODY thought it was a match, and so did he, and so did she. One
evening at a croquet party she hit her pet corn a whack with the
mallet that sounded like a torpedo, and he--he laughed. “We meet as
strangers,” she wrote on her cuff and showed it to him. “Think of me as
no more,” he whispered huskily, and when the game was ended he rushed
down to the Mississippi[B] and drowned[C].
[B] Saloon.
[C] Sorrow.
* * * * *
“I WOULDN’T be such a Christian as you are, John,” said his wife, as
she stood in the doorway, dressed for church. “You could go with me
very well, if you wanted to.” “How can I?” he half sobbed. “There’s the
wood to be split, and the coal to be shoveled over to the other side
of the cellar, the baby to be dressed, and no dishes washed for dinner
yet.” “Ah, I didn’t think of that,” she murmured thoughtfully, and,
giving her new cloak a fresh hitch aft, sailed out alone.
* * * * *
ONE night last Summer a tired, discouraged man out on North Hill
went home and flung himself down on a lounge, and said “he wished he
were dead, dead, dead.” In two hours he was writhing in a premature
and unseasonable attack of cholera morbus, and howled, and prayed,
and sweat, and had four doctors in the house, and drank a quart of
medicine, and had mustard plasters smeared all over him, and wept, and
said he wasn’t half tended to, and he believed they would like to see
him die.
* * * * *
“ARE the children safe?” asks the _Christian Union_. Quite safe, we
assure you. They are up in the garret, playing hotel fire. Jimmie is
the clerk, and is trying to slide down the water pipe to the ground,
Willie is a guest, hanging to the window sill and waiting for the
flames to reach his hands before he tries to drop to the shed roof, two
stories below, and Tom is a heroic fireman, and has tied his fishing
line around the baby’s body, and is letting it down to the ground. Oh,
yes, the children are all right: just finish your call and don’t fret
about the children.
* * * * *
“RENTS,” said Mr. Middlerib, with a sigh of not unmixed satisfaction,
“are coming down. Yesterday morning I tore the back of my coat on the
woodshed door, last night I snagged the foundation of my trousers on
a nail in a store box, and this morning I fell down on the frozen
sidewalk and split the knee of the same trousers clear across. Rents
are certainly getting lower.” “Yes,” responded Mrs. Middlerib, looking
across toward the busy figure at the sewing-machine, “and seamstresses
are getting hired.” Mr. Middlerib looked up at his quiet spouse in
vague astonishment, as if for explanation, but she looked sublimely
unconscious, and the good man went off down town with his napkin tucked
under his chin, wondering all the way to the office if she meant it or
if it was only his interpretation.
* * * * *
“A MERCIFUL man,” tenderly remarked a Ninth Street man one bitter cold
January morning, “is merciful to his beast,” and he called the dog in
out of the snow, gave him his breakfast in a soup plate, and laid a
piece of carpet down behind the kitchen stove for him to snooze on.
Then the man went down town, and the neighbors watched his wife shovel
snow-paths to the woodshed, cistern, stable, and front gate, and then
do an hour’s work cleaning off the sidewalk.
* * * * *
WHO does not love a faithful, honest dog, man’s faithful friend? And
yet who is there, stretching out in the shade for a quiet afternoon
nap, who has had man’s faithful friend come panting up, and, in an
excess of honest affection, lay a great broad, hot tongue over one’s
cheek, from chin to eyebrow, that does not get up and seize man’s
faithful friend by the tail and one ear and try to throw him across a
prairie fifteen miles wide?
* * * * *
THE New York _Herald_ says: “Bake your ripe pear in a tart, and eat
it with brandy and cream.” We’ll do it. Here, Alvaretto, bake us that
ripe pear in a tart and dress it with brandy and cream. What! the pear
eaten? Well then, the tart crust and the trimmings. The tart gone! Is
it possible? Then the brandy and cream. Amazement! no cream? Ah, well
then, we must not neglect good advice. Bring what is left of the recipe.
* * * * *
A MONKEY that can say “papa” and “mamma” and “Brazil” is going to the
Paris exposition. America can send a donkey that can say, “Haw--yaas,
dweadful baw; somebody wing faw the pwopwietah.”
* * * * *
THEY have just found the skin of another Dane nailed to the oaken door
of an old, old church in England. The skin isn’t entire, only scraps of
it remaining under the broad flat heads of the nails. It was a pleasant
way the Danes had of destroying the beauty of their criminals--they
skinned them and then nailed the skin to a church door. History does
not tell us how the unfortunate victim employed himself during the
operation, but it is quite likely that, having nothing else to do, he
was into some deviltry.
* * * * *
OLD Mr. Troph went into the parlor the other night at the witching
hour of 11.45 and found the room unlighted and his daughter and a dear
friend, one of the dual form of garmenture variety, occupying the
tete-a-tete in the corner. “Evangeline,” the old man said sternly,
“this is scandalous.” “Yes, papa,” she answered sweetly, “it is
candleless because times are so hard and lights cost so much that
Ferdinand and I said we would try and get along with the starlight.”
And the old gentleman turned about in speechless amazement and tried to
walk out of the room through a panel in the wall paper.
* * * * *
A WOMAN out on North Hill, being counted out the other morning, after
a debate on the question, “Who shall arise and build the fire?” got
up and split her husband’s wooden leg into kindling wood, and broiled
his steak with it. It made him so mad that he got hold of her false
teeth and bit the dog with them. She cried until she had a fit of
hysterics, and then flipped out his glass eye and climbed upon the bed
post and waxed the glaring eye to the ceiling with a quid of chewing
gum. Then he took her wisp of false hair and tied it to a stick, and
began whitewashing the kitchen with it. Then she started off to obtain
a divorce, but Judge Newman decided that he couldn’t grant a divorce
unless there were two parties to the suit, and there was hardly enough
left of them to make one.
* * * * *
“YOU don’t look at all well,” a venerable gobbler out in a North Hill
poultry yard remarked to a melancholy-looking young rooster, a short
time before Thanksgiving day. “No,” was the reply, “I have reason to
look solemn: I expect to die necks tweak.” The gobbler smiled grimly
and pondered over the uncertainty of poultric life as he slowly
swallowed a two-inch bolt head.
* * * * *
MRS. MIDDLERIB paused to take a final survey of the table before she
called the ladies out to tea. She started as her eyes fell upon the
plate of lemon tarts. There were five where there had been nine. She
sought her only son and put him in the witness box. He objected to her
putting her own construction upon his answers, and was subjected to the
usual punishment for contumaciousness. And the next “composition day”
at school, Master Middlerib amazed his teacher by reading, as the title
of his essay, “The Lost Tarts, and why They can Never be Recovered.”
* * * * *
SWEET, gushing, artless girl! She came home just before the Christmas
holidays. She went away from Burlington one September; went to England
first; spent the Winter in Italy; sauntered through Germany in the
Spring, came back to America and trifled away the Summer at Saratoga,
Long Branch and the White Mountains; previous to this trip she had been
away to school five years, and when she jumped out of the palace car
into her father’s arms, she said, impulsively, “Oh, Paw, Paw, deah,
deah Paw, thay’s no place like home!” And Paw’s face was a study as he
replied, “Well, no; no; reckon not; must be quite a novelty to ye.”
* * * * *
THE worst thing we have seen about Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the only
stain on an otherwise irreproachable character, is that he is the
inventor of that parlor aggravation known as the hand stereoscope; a
vexatious contrivance for which the pictures are always too large to
be crammed into the springs or too small to stay in them, of which the
slide is always shoved off the end of the stick in the vain efforts of
the observer to find a focus, and of which the glasses always make you
see the picture so double that it gives you the headache and finally
compels you to peep over the top in order to gain the information
necessary to make some intelligent remark about the jumble you have
been staring at.
* * * * *
A YOUNG man out on North Hill bought a parrot some months ago, and in
anticipation of the fact that he was going to be married and go to the
Centennial, he secretly taught the parrot to say, “Welcome, thrice
welcome home,” every time anybody opened the front door, thinking
what a delightful surprise it would be to his young wife to be thus
cheerfully welcomed home on their return. But while they were on their
tour, the nervous woman who was left in charge of the house taught the
parrot a new remark, as a protection against burglars; and when the
young people came home on the night train and let themselves in at
the hall door with a latch key, they were shocked and appalled by a
terrific shout of “Thieves! thieves! Police! police! Here Bull! here
Bull! Scatter, ye son of a thief, or I’ll tear your heart out!” Next
day the parrot died, and the young wife now says she wouldn’t stay
alone in that house, not for a divorce.
* * * * *
A BURLINGTON naturalist last Sunday, while investigating the causes
and effects of the poison of a wasp sting, nobly determined to make
of himself a martyr to science, and accordingly handed his thumb to
an impatient insect he had caged in a bottle. The wasp entered into
the martyr business with a great deal of spirit, and backed up to the
thumb with an abruptness which took the scientist by surprise. He was
so deeply absorbed in the study of remedies that he forgot to make any
notes of the other points in connection with stings, but his wife wrote
a paragraph in his note-book, for the benefit of science, to the effect
that the primary effect of a wasp sting is abrupt, blasphemous and
terrific profanity, followed by an intense desire, fairly amounting to
a mania, for ammonia, camphor and raw brandy.
* * * * *
ONE day, just after King Solomon had written a column of solid
nonpareil wise and moral proverbs, he took his eldest son by the elbow,
led him down the back stairs of the palace, through the back yard, past
the woodshed, out into the alley, backed him up behind Ahithophel’s
wood-pile, looked warily around to see that no one was listening,
and whispered into the young man’s ear, “My son, a little office in
a spread-eagle life insurance company is better than a cart-load of
preferred stock in the Ophir mines.” And then the monarch threw his
head on one side, drew in his chin, shut one eye, and gazed at his
offspring in silence. Three years afterward, when the Great Hebraic
Consolidated Stormy Jordan Life Assurance Company, of which that
intelligent young prince was president, went into bankruptcy, the young
man was able to let his father, who was a little short at the time,
have 275,000 shekels for ninety days, on his simple note of hand.
* * * * *
THEY were very pretty, and there was apparently five or six years
difference in their ages. As the train pulled up at Bussey, the younger
girl blushed, flattened her nose nervously against the window, and
drew back in joyous smiles as a young man came dashing into the car,
shook hands tenderly and cordially, insisted on carrying her valise,
magazine, little paper bundle, and would probably have carried herself
had she permitted him. The passengers smiled as she left the car, and
the murmur went rippling through the coach, “They’re engaged.” The
other girl sat looking nervously out of the window, and once or twice
gathered her parcels together as though she would leave the car, yet
seemed to be expecting some one. At last he came. He bulged in at the
door like a house on fire, looked along the seats until his manly gaze
fell on her upturned, expectant face, roared, “Come on! I’ve been
waiting for you on the platform for fifteen minutes!” grabbed her
basket, and strode out of the car, while she followed with a little
valise, a band-box, a paper bag full of lunch, a bird-cage, a glass jar
of jelly, and an extra shawl. And a crusty-looking old bachelor, in the
farther end of the car, croaked out, in unison with the indignant looks
of the passengers, “They’re married!”
* * * * *
MR. and Mrs. Bilderback were walking slowly home from church one
Sunday, when they met a young lady of singular beauty and sweetness of
countenance, who was quite lame. And Mrs. Bilderback turning to her
husband, said, “Did you ever notice what a sweet, uncomplaining look
of resignation rests like a halo on the faces of young girls who are
so sadly afflicted as the lady who just passed us?” And old Bilderback
said that indeed he had, and he begged his wife to observe him very
closely, and notice what a sweet, uncomplaining expression of peaceful
and holy resignation spread itself over his face, like a halo, or like
a lump of butter on a hot buckwheat cake, at such times as his corns
tried him unusually bad. And she only remarked casually that when they
got home she would hang a halo around his irreverent head that would
make what little hair there was left on it think the millennium was a
million years farther away than ever.
* * * * *
“THEY had a rather odd race out at the old Acme ball grounds
yesterday,” Trotters remarked to Ponsonby when they met yesterday
morning. “Jones rode his little calico pony around the block, and
Brown rolled an empty flour barrel the same distance, even start, for
$10.” “Jones beat him, of course?” said Ponsonby. “Brown was a fool to
make such a match.” “Don’t be too sure,” rejoined Trotters, “when they
reached the outcome, the barrel head; blowed if it didn’t.” Ponsonby
stared, then slowly smiled, giggled, and finally guffawed. “Good
enough,” he said. “I’ll get that off to Mrs. Ponsonby.” So when he went
home he told her all about it. “Well,” said she, “that’s just about as
much sense as I supposed that precious Brown of yours has. I’m glad he
lost his money.” “Go slow,” yelled the delighted Ponsonby, who doesn’t
often have a chance to sell his wife, “go slow! By George, Samantha,
Brown beat!” And Mrs. Ponsonby stared and said he must think she was
as big a fool as Brown. “No,” said he, hastily correcting himself,
“no, that wasn’t just the way of it, the barrel beat, that’s it! The
barrel beat; Brown led, did, for a fact, by Jove.” And Mrs. Ponsonby
scornfully told him to go out to the woodshed and see if he could find
any sticks that would go into the kitchen stove--she couldn’t. And
Ponsonby confidentially told the gentleman who saws his wood an inch
and a half too long for every stove in the house that you might as
well tell a joke to a sawbuck as to his wife, for she hadn’t as much
conception of genuine humor as a cow.
* * * * *
ONE bright May morning, when the building season was at its busiest, a
careless mason dropped a half brick from the second story of a building
out on Jefferson Street, on which he was at work. Leaning over the
wall and glancing downward, he discovered a respectable citizen with
his silk hat scrunched over his eyes and ears, rising from a recumbent
posture. The mason, in tones of some apprehension, asked: “Did that
brick hit any one down there?” The citizen, with great difficulty
extricating himself from the glove-fitting extinguisher, replied, with
considerable wrath: “Yes, sir, it did; it hit me.” “That’s right,”
exclaimed the mason, in tones of undisguised admiration. “Noble man! I
would rather have wasted a thousand bricks than had you tell me a lie
about it.”
* * * * *
THE papers in this country are quite generally publishing the following
_mot_ of Talleyrand’s, which is read with the greatest enjoyment by all
classes of newspaper readers:
It is said that the notorious M. De Manbreuil, whose name of Marquis
d’Orvault came so scandalously before the public a few years past,
proposed to have Napoleon assassinated, and that the Abbe de Prade
was in favor of the scheme, and discussed its execution with
Talleyrand, and that the following words passed:
“Combien vous faut-il?”
“Dix millions.”
“Dix millions?” said Talleyrand, “mais ce n’est rein pour debarrasser
la France d’un el fileau.”
This is pretty good, but it reminds us of a much better one, though it
may be somewhat old, which was related to us by Rev. Jasper C. Romilly,
formerly of this city, about himself. Mr. Romilly, whose distinguishing
personal characteristic was an immense black beard, was for some years
a missionary at Ugobogo, in Farther India, and on one occasion he dined
with the Bugaboo of that province. When the wine and walnuts were
brought in the Bugaboo said:
“Marcharikai hoi-to-po ke-tee nomkidom?”
“Jabbero pompety doodle de wonk klonk kobberee jam,” replied Mr.
Romilly.
“Yowk?” exclaimed the potentate, “chickero boobery hong dong
choi-ke-ree yang ste’ boi.”
This was, indeed, too good to keep.
* * * * *
WOMAN is a natural traveler. It is a study to see her start off on a
trip by herself. She comes down to the depot in an express wagon three
hours before train time. She insists on sitting on her trunk, out on
the platform, to keep it from being stolen. She picks up her reticule,
fan, parasol, lunch basket, small pot with a house plant in it, shawl,
paper bag of candy, bouquet (she never travels without one), small
tumbler and extra veil, and chases hysterically after every switch
engine that goes by, under the impression that it is her train. Her
voice trembles as she presents herself at the restaurant and tries to
buy a ticket, and she knocks with the handle of her parasol on the door
of the old disused tool-house in vain hopes that the baggage man will
come out and check her trunk. She asks every body in the depot and on
the platform when her train will start, and where it will stand, and,
looking straight at the great clock, asks: “What time is it now?”
She sees, with terror, the baggage man shy her trunk into a car where
two men are smoking, instead of locking it up by itself in a large
strong, brown car with “Bad order, shops,” chalked on the side, which
she has long ago determined to be the baggage car as the only safe one
in sight. Although the first at the depot, she is the last to get her
ticket; and once on the cars, she sits, to the end of her journey, in
an agony of apprehension that she has got on the wrong train and will
be landed at some strange station, put in a close carriage, drugged,
and murdered, and to every last male passenger who walks down the aisle
she stands up and presents her ticket, which she invariably carries in
her hand. She finally recognizes her waiting friends on the platform,
leaves the car in a burst of gratitude, and the train is ten miles away
before she remembers that her reticule, fan, parasol, lunch basket,
verbena, shawl, candy, tumbler, veil and bouquet, are on the car seat
where she left them, or at the depot in Peoria, for the life of her she
can’t tell which.
* * * * *
HOW often a little careless action, a thoughtless word, a restless
gesture, brings a flood of thoughts surging into the soul, that almost
tear away the veil of mystery that hangs between to-day and to-morrow,
and give us vague and hasty glimpses into the dark uncertain future.
When you see a man come out of a drug store, for instance, with a
“prescription carefully compounded,” in his hand, and dash away at
break-neck speed, and then see the pharmacist come to the door carrying
an uncorked bottle, and smell at it earnestly with one nostril, gaze
anxiously down the street after the man, smell at it long and intensely
with the other nostril, stare wildly up the street after the man,
and then sniff at it once or twice with both nostrils, read the
prescription over, and retire into the medicine shop with a gloomy brow
and sad shakes of the head, how many things you begin to think about
then, as it might be.
* * * * *
“MY son,” said a pious father out on South Hill to his hopeful son,
“you did not saw any wood for the kitchen stove yesterday, as I told
you to, you left the back gate open and let the cow get out, you cut
off eighteen feet from the clothes-line to make a lasso, you stoned Mr.
Robinson’s pet dog and lamed it, you put a hard-shell turtle in the
hired girl’s bed, you tied a strange dog to Mr. Jacobson’s door-bell,
you painted red and green stripes on the legs of old Mrs. Polaby’s
white pony, and hung your sister’s bustle out in the front window.
Now, what am I--what can I do to you for such conduct?” “Are all the
counties heard from?” asked the candidate. The father replied sternly,
“No trifling, sir; no, I have yet several reports to receive from
others of the neighbors.” “Then,” replied the boy, “you will not be
justified in proceeding to extreme measures until the official count
is in.” Shortly afterward the election was thrown into the house, and
before half the votes were canvassed, it was evident, from the peculiar
intonation of the applause, that the boy was badly beaten.
* * * * *
PASSING by one of the city schools one day we listened to the scholars
singing, “Oh how I love my teacher dear.” There was one boy, with a
voice like a tornado, who was so enthusiastic that he emphasized every
other word and roared, “Oh _how_ I _love_ my _teach_-er _dear_,” with a
vim that left no possible doubt of his affection. Ten minutes afterward
that boy had been stood up on the floor for putting shoemaker’s wax
on his teacher’s chair, got three demerit marks for drawing a picture
of her with red chalk on the back of an atlas, been well shaken for
putting a bent pin in another boy’s chair, scolded for whistling out
loud, sentenced to stay after school for drawing ink mustaches on his
face and blacking the end of another boy’s nose, and soundly whipped
for slapping three hundred and thirty-nine spit balls up against the
ceiling, and throwing one big one into a girl’s ear. You can’t believe
half a boy says when he sings.
* * * * *
“WHO dem, Cassius?” a visiting freedman from Keokuk asked a friend the
other day, as a Masonic lodge, in funeral procession, passed by.
“Dey’s de Free and Expected Masons.”
“’Mazin’ what?”
“Why, mason nuffin, jest on’y Masons.”
“Sho! How long dey bin free?”
“Oh, gory, long time. Spects ever since de mancipation proclamation,
anyhow. Some on ’em was free before den.”
“Dat so? Went off to Canada, mos’ likely?”
“Spect so.”
“Who’s done expectin’ of ’em?”
“Nobody; jest expectin’ demselves. Dey’s on’y jest Free and Expected
Masons, dat’s all.”
“Sho! Well, I’d jest like to know what dar is ’mazin’ about ’em an’ I’d
done be satisfied.”
* * * * *
OH, the artless prattle of an innocent childhood! How the sweet
music of their hearts and voices calms the wild yearnings of the
sorrow-crowned years of maturity. At a happy home in Burlington the
other evening, where the family was gathered around the tea-table
entertaining unexpected guests, the fond mother said to the youngest
darling, “Weedie, darling; be careful; you mustn’t spill the berries on
the table-cloth.” “’Taint a table-cloth,” promptly responded darling,
“it’s a sheet.” And late at night, when the company had gone away, and
that sweet child was standing with its head nearly where its feet ought
to be, catching with its tear-blinded eyes occasional glimpses of a
fleeting slipper that fluttered in the air in eccentric gyrations, one
could see how early in the stormy years of this brief life, one may
begin to suffer for the truth.
* * * * *
WHEN you see a young man sitting in a parlor, with the ugliest six
year old boy that ever frightened himself in the mirror clambering
over his knees, jerking his white tie out of knot, mussing his white
vest, kicking his shins, feeling in all his pockets for nickles,
bombarding him from time to time with various bits of light furniture
and _bijouterie_, calling him names at the top of his fiendish lungs
and yelling incessantly for him to come out in the yard and play, while
the unresisting victim smiles all the time like the cover of a comic
almanac, you may safely bet--although there isn’t a sign of a girl
apparent in a radius of 10,000 miles--you can bet your bottom dollar
that howling boy has a sister who is primping in a room not twenty feet
away, and that the young man doesn’t come there just for the fun of
playing with her brother.
* * * * *
IT was at the sociable. Young Mr. Sophthed, who reads poetry oh,
_so_ divinely, and is oh, _so_ nice, stepped on her dress as she was
hurrying across the room. K-r-r-rt! R’p! R’p! how it tore and jerked,
and how Mr. Sophthed looked as though he would die. “Oh, dear, no, Mr.
Sophthed,” she sweetly said, smiling till she looked like a seraph who
had got down here by mistake, “it’s of no consequence, I assure you,
it doesn’t make a particle of difference, at all.” Just twenty-five
minutes later, her husband, helping her into the street car, mussed
her ruffle. “Goodness gracious me!” she snapped out, “go way and let me
alone; you’ll tear me to pieces if you keep on.” And she flopped down
on the seat so hard that everything rattled, and the frightened driver,
ejaculating, “There goes that brake chain again,” crawled under the car
with his lantern to see how badly it had given way.
* * * * *
ART has its votaries even amid the untaught children of the wilderness.
A few days ago a savage Indian painted his own face, went into an
emigrant wagon that was sketched, by himself, out on the prairie after
dark, and drew a woman from under the canvas and sculptor.
* * * * *
MRS. J. C. MCWHELTER, who lives out on Ninth Street, worked three weeks
building a rookery out of cracked geodes, and threw the whole pile away
in fifteen minutes yesterday afternoon, bombarding a neighbor who said
her baby’s hair was red enough to heat its catnip tea on.
* * * * *
AN enraptured Burlington lover, hearing his sweetheart sigh dejectedly
the other evening, rapturously administered a quartette of kisses and
exclaimed, “You’re mine, now, in spite of fate!” “And why?” she asked.
“Because,” he said, “four of a kind beats ace high.” But she believes
to this day that he played a cold deck on her.
* * * * *
“ALL flesh is grass,” as the reaping machine said when it chawed up the
harvest hand.
* * * * *
A MAN may carry a load of guilt concealed in his tortured soul for
years, and hide it with a veneering of hollow, heartless, deceitful
smiles, but it doesn’t take five minutes for the thoughtless world to
observe and understand the one-shouldered gait of a man whose larboard
suspender button has parted.
* * * * *
THE other day a public reader, while entertaining an audience with a
masterly rendition of an extract from “Macbeth,” dropped his false
teeth out, but he went right on with the soliloquy, “Ig gish a daggag
ash I see befog me? Cug, leg me glug ghee!” And then the audience got
up and howled and threw all the chairs out of the window and sent out
for somebody to come in and hold them while they hollered.
* * * * *
A SOUTH HILL man complained to old Dibbs, the other day, that his house
was infested with chimney swallows, but old Dibbs says he is ready to
bet fifty dollars that the man swallows twice as much as the chimney
does.
* * * * *
A YOUNG native poet, who is writing a “song of olden Rome,” asks us to
give him a rhyme for Romulus. A dozen, if he wants them:
“If o’er that wall you leap, oh dunce,
The lightning stroke would harm you less”
But Remus laughed and leaped; at once
His head was punched by Romulus.
* * * * *
A FELLOW never appreciates the tender beauty of a sister’s love half
so much as when he makes her get out of the big rocking chair, and let
him have the morning paper, while she goes off and leans up against the
end of the bureau and feeds her starving intellect on the household
receipts at the back of Jayne’s family almanac. A brother’s love is
like pure gold. It’s dreadfully hard to find, and when you find it,
it’s very apt to be pyrites.
* * * * *
“DID you never,” asked a transcendental young lady just three weeks
from Vassar, of the West Hill young man, “Did you never feel a vague,
unrestful yearning after the beyond? a wild, strange, impulsive longing
and reaching out after the unattainable?” And the West Hill man said
he often had, last Summer, at such times as he was trying to scratch a
square inch full of hives, right between his shoulder blades, and just
out of reach of any thing.
* * * * *
A BENEVOLENT clergyman recently helped a profane Burlington inebriate
out of the gutter, and gently rebuking him reminded him that the “wages
of sin is death.” “I know ’t,” replied the erring one, “but I’ve worked
so much over time, and the shop is so far in arrears to me that I’ll
never get half that’s comin’ to me any how.” And he went off to work
right along on the same old job.
* * * * *
THE tramp has his revenge on society after all. If they refuse his
request for a square meal at any house, he lurks around the vicinity
with threatening glances until nightfall, when he skulks rapidly away
with the cheering, comforting knowledge that while he is snoring all
the hours of that long Summer night away under a haystack, every being
in that house will sit bolt upright in bed all night, frightened by the
wind, terrified by the rustling of the leaves, scared into fits when
even the dog barks, and fairly bounced out of bed every time the clock
strikes, while a nightmare of burglarious tramps fills every drowsy
moment with awakening terrors. No wonder that tramps always look happy
and contented.
* * * * *
OLD Mr. Balbriggan is very much pleased with a gentleman whom he has
engaged to saw wood. “When he piles the wood,” said old Balbriggan to
his friend, “if one stick projects beyond the others, he pounds it in
with the ax.” “He’s a slouch,” replied Bifelstone, “you should see my
wood sawyer. When he gets the wood all piled he takes off the rough
projecting ends with a hand saw.” “He couldn’t pile wood for me,” broke
in old Mr. Pilkinghorn, “my sawyer piles the wood carefully, then goes
over the ends with a jack plane, sand-papers them down and puts on a
coat of varnish before he ever thinks of asking for his pay.” And then
they all went in after a big drink before Throckmorton could tell how
his wood sawyer silver-plated all the ends of the wood and nailed a
handle on every stick to pick it up by. Because, you see, Throckmorton
is such a liar, and they all know it.
* * * * *
A WEST HILL minister picked up a frozen wasp on the sidewalk, and with
a view to advancing the interests of science, he carried it in the
house and held it by the tail while he warmed its ears over a lamp
chimney. His object was to see if wasps froze to death, or merely lay
dormant during the Winter. He is of the opinion that they merely lie
dormant, and the dormantest kind at that, and when they revive, he
says, the tail thaws out first, for while this one’s head, right over
the lamp, was so stiff and cold it could not wink, its probe worked
with such inconceivable rapidity that the minister couldn’t gasp fast
enough to keep up with it. He threw the vicious thing down the lamp
chimney, and said he didn’t want to have any more truck with a dormant
wasp, at which his wife burst into tears and asked how he, a minister
of the gospel, could use such language, right before the children, too.
* * * * *
WHEN a man accustoms himself to owning a dog, and turning around at
every corner to look up and down street for him, and whistle him out
of stairways, or yell at him to stop his fooling with other dogs and
come along, or make dashes into a crowd of earnest and excited dogs who
are holding a caucus and have each other by the ear, and especially
his dog--that man is a slave to a habit that he will never break. It
will cling to him, we believe, after he gets to heaven, for most men
who love dogs are pretty sure of going to heaven. We once saw an old
settler standing at the Barrett House corner, peering up and down
street, and stooping down to look under the hacks, and “wondering where
he could be,” and whistling and growing impatient, and scolding and
calling, “Hyuh, Turk! yuh! yuh! yuh!” until every dog in Burlington was
sitting around the Barrett House corner, patiently pounding the snow
with his tail and mentally resolving to lay for Turk if he ever came.
Presently a young man came along and, greeting the anxious dog hunter
as his “Father,” asked what he was waiting there for? The old settler
said he had lost Turk somewhere right around there, and couldn’t see
hide nor hair of him, and couldn’t imagine where he had gone to.
“Turk!” roared his dutiful son, “Turk! Suffering Moses! And him dead
eight years ago!” And he hustled the old man away before he could begin
to whistle up any more ghosts.
* * * * *
THE balmy breath of Spring is so entwined with the fragrance of new
onions that a man has to grip his nose with a spring clothes-pin every
time he stoops to pluck a violet.
* * * * *
A GIFTED contributor sends us a poem beginning “Open the doors to the
children.” You’d better, if you don’t want all the paint kicked off the
panels.
* * * * *
THERE is nothing that tends to destroy popular sympathy for the working
classes so much as the habit a bricklayer has of dropping bits of
mortar from the top of a five-story wall into the eye of the wondering
man who stands under the lofty scaffolding and looks up.
* * * * *
A PORCELAIN-LINED kettle in a berry-stricken neighborhood is the
nearest approach to perpetual motion that has yet been realized. Its
incessant motion is only rivaled by the slow, steady growth of the
sugar bill.
* * * * *
ONE of the discoveries made by the latest arctic explorers is that the
length of the polar night is one hundred and forty-two days. What a
heavenly place that would be in which to tell a man with a bill to call
around day after to-morrow and get his money.
* * * * *
A FASHION journal says “white velvet dresses give a roundness to the
figure.” They give an awful lankness to the figures on a hundred dollar
bill.
* * * * *
_Multum in parvo_: Iowa tramp, to lady of the house: “Please, missus,
won’t you give me something to drink? I’m so hungry I don’t know where
I’ll stay to-night.”
* * * * *
AN eminent New York jurist, who has retired from the bench, always
shakes hands with his friends by turning around and passing his right
hand behind his back. It is supposed the peculiar habit was contracted
during his active professional life.
* * * * *
CARDS of invitation in Utah, issued by a young lady and her mother,
always present the compliments of “Miss Smith and the Mrs. Smiths.”
* * * * *
WE are told by a Russian traveler that the summit of Mt. Hood is a
single sharp peak of lava. White or Balaclava?
* * * * *
A SCIENTIFIC gentleman sends us an elaborate treatise on “the
healthiness of lemons.” They may be dreadfully healthy, but they are
terribly soured in their dispositions.
* * * * *
A RISING young tenor of Burlington has a neck eight inches long, and it
gives him an immense power over his voice; enables him to throat a long
ways. (Tra, la, la!)
* * * * *
THE whale is the sulkiest of all fishes. He is the worst pouter in the
business.
* * * * *
ABOUT the oldest little game of draw we know of was played when Joshua
razed Jericho, and the fellows of the city wished they hadn’t stayed in.
* * * * *
YOUR landlord is probably the finest example of filial affection and
duty you ever met. He is unremitting in his attention to and care of
his pay rents.
* * * * *
“WAS it her brother?” is the title of a new novel. We think not. It
is our impression that the large gentlemen in a plaid coat, who was
kicking him down stairs and calling for the dog, was her brother.
* * * * *
GEORGE WASHINGTON’S strongest hold upon the American people is the fact
that he never wore a box coat and a plug hat.
* * * * *
HISTORY says, “Cæsar had his Brutus.” But somehow or other we always
had the impression that Brutus rather had Cæsar.
* * * * *
BY some wicked and unpardonable error, the case of the photographs
of editors on exhibition at the Centennial got misplaced, and was
exhibited in a frame labeled “Native woods of the United States.”
* * * * *
NATURE’S effort to maintain equilibrium is never better set forth than
in the instinctive struggles of a man with one suspender to carry both
shoulders even.
* * * * *
ON account of the Turco-Russian war and the failure of the American
cabbage crop last year, nearly all the genuine imported Turkish tobacco
used in this country this Summer will have to be made out of plaintain
weed.
* * * * *
THE day after Christmas, father and mother no longer come sneaking in
at the back door with mysterious looking bundles. No, indeedy. Mother
is gliding around with the expression of a Christian martyr with the
toothache, because she didn’t get what she expected, and father is
sitting around, holding his breath till the bills come in.
* * * * *
YOU can utilize your cake of maple sugar, if you find there is too
much sand in it to make molasses of, by putting it in a neat frame of
card-board, or some kind of fancy work, in bright colors, and hanging
it up against the wall to light matches on. It never wears out.
* * * * *
FLIES are made for some good and useful purpose after all. If it wasn’t
for the busy flies, men with their never dying souls to save and lots
of work to do, would lie down after dinner and sleep till six o’clock
every day.
* * * * *
A NASHVILLE bank robber burrowed under a street for five days, and
at length came up in the coal vault of a beer saloon, three doors
away from the bank, and bit himself in eleven places with the most
uncompromising dog he ever tried to conciliate. The next time he
attempts any mining operations he will take a practical engineer along.
* * * * *
IT was intensely hot in Salt Lake City last Summer, and one night about
1,820 linear feet of prickly heat broke out on the infant backs in
Brigham Young’s nursery. The eruption hasn’t been equaled since Mt.
Vesuvius cooled off.
* * * * *
IT is in the merry month of Spring that a tree peddler comes around
and talks you to death, and sells you a plum tree that bears fruit so
bitter that it poisons every curculio that tastes it, and some cherry
trees that send up one hundred and fifty sprouts to the square inch
and will lift the house off its foundations in two years’ growth, and
some apple trees that neither sprout, blossom, nor bear fruit, and
some blackberry bushes that spread all over a ten-acre lot the first
season, and some gooseberry bushes that have thorns on a foot long, and
never have anything else, and some peach trees that break out in bloom
from the ground to the tip of the topmost branch five days after they
are put in the ground and die as dead as a flint the sixth day, and a
climbing rose tree that turns out to be wild ivy and poisons every soul
about the house before the Summer is over.
* * * * *
WHEN the late Governor of the Persian province of Fars retired from
office, the Government officials put him in the stocks and pounded the
soles of his feet until he disgorged $300,000 of crooked salary. If the
Government of the United States would adopt that system, five hundred
million pairs of crutches would carry the population of the republic to
and from its daily labor. And if we knew where we could get hold of a
man who would give down like the late worthy Governor of Fars, we would
gather him by the ankles, stand him on his head, and welt the soles of
his feet until his backbone went through the top of his head and stuck
nine inches in the ground.
* * * * *
THERE is a junior in the Burlington high school who, when his father
cuffs his scholastic ears for leaving the wheelbarrow standing athwart
the front gate, can go out to the woodshed and swear in French, grumble
in German, threaten to run away and be a pirate in good classic Greek,
and blubber in honest United States.
* * * * *
ONE day last Winter a young lady broke through the ice of a deep
skating pond near Toronto, and a young man rescued her at the risk of
his own life. As the half drowned girl was recovering consciousness,
her agonized father arrived on the spot. Taking one of her cold, white
hands in one of his own, he reached out the other for the hand of her
rescuer, but the young man, realizing his danger, with one frightened
glance broke for the woods, and was soon lost to view. He has not been
heard of since, and it is supposed that he is traveling in the United
States under the false and hollow name of Smith.
* * * * *
WE haven’t given the subject enough study to speak very confidently
upon it, but we rather believe, when the end of the world comes, and
the last trump calls all mankind together, that the man who died with
rheumatism will lie still a long time, and will feel the small of his
back, and rub his knees slowly and thoughtfully a great many times,
before he finally groans and makes up his mind to get up. And, as like
as not, by the time he gets on his feet everybody else will be gone.
* * * * *
MAN--What power of nature has he not subdued? What climate has he not
trodden under foot? What arctic rigor and tropical heat, what polar
snows and equatorial sunstrokes has he not laughed to scorn? He has
tamed the elements, he has made the ocean his highway, he has made
fire and water, earth and air, his servants, and bent beneath his
all-subduing yoke even the wild lightnings to be his messenger. And yet
he can not, arching himself upon the back of his head and on his heels,
scoop with his eager palm, cracker crumbs from the irritating sheet
with a sufficient degree of success to insure himself a good night’s
sleep. He can not, he can not--oh, might of the giant, it kaint be did!
* * * * *
A WOMAN will take the smallest drawer in a bureau for her own private
use, and will pack away in it bright bits of boxes, of all shades and
sizes, dainty fragments of ribbon, and scraps of lace, foamy ruffles,
velvet things for the neck, bundles of old love-letters, pieces of
jewelry, handkerchiefs, fans, things that no man knows the name of, all
sorts of fresh-looking, bright little traps that you couldn’t catalogue
in a column, and any hour of the day or night she can go to that drawer
and pick up any article she wants without disturbing any thing else.
Whereas a man, having the biggest, deepest and widest drawer assigned
to him, will chuck into it three socks, a collar-box, an old necktie,
two handkerchiefs, a pipe and a pair of suspenders, and to save his
soul he can’t shut that drawer without leaving more ends of things
sticking out than there are things in it, and it always looks as though
it had been packed with a hydraulic press.
* * * * *
ONE day a young man of respectable appearance attracted considerable
attention on Third Street, while crossing over to the Barrett House. He
stopped in the middle of the street and yelled, and danced up and down
on one leg, while he held the other out and kicked, like the can-can
lady on the bulletin boards. The bystanders thought he was crazy, and
threw stones and mud at him, and knocked him down and choked him, and
held him still, while he never ceased to shriek, “Snake up my leg!
Snake up my leg!” Then they reached up and pulled a small roll of bills
out of his trousers leg, and let him up, when he raised his hands to
heaven and swore he would never carry money in a hip pocket again, hole
or no hole.
* * * * *
IT was on a bright April morning that Mr. Alanson Bodley, who lives out
on Summer Street, stepped out of the house in a tender frame of mind,
singing softly to himself, “Oh had I the wings of a dove, I’d fly,
Away from----” Just then the hired girl threw the bed-room carpet out
of the window, and as its dusty folds enveloped Mr. Bodley, and threw
his struggling form down stairs, he was heard to exclaim in muffled
tones, “If I get out of this, if I don’t cut the raw heart out of the
bloody-minded assassin that slung that carpet, strike me dead!” Thus,
too often, the tenderer influences that bring into life and being our
higher and noble emotions and transcendental longings, are warped and
distorted by the stern realities of life, like a wet boot behind the
kitchen stove.
* * * * *
THEY had the awfulest time up at Jerome Cavendish’s house, on West
Hill, one evening, and Mrs. Cavendish went into hysterics, and Miss
Cavendish fainted, and young George Cavendish grabbed his hat and
ran out of the house, and old Cavendish raved and ramped around like
a crazy man, all just because they had waffles for tea, and Miss
Cavendish found a--“oh! _ow! ow!!_ OO-OO-OO!!! EE-E-E-E!!!” hard-baked
beetle in a waffle. Oh, it was terrible! It was awful! It was too
awful! Too awful! Two waffle!
* * * * *
ONE day last Spring a sweet-faced woman, with a smile like an angel and
a voice softer and sweeter than the sound of flutes upon the water,
was walking up Fifth Street. She was walking very slowly, enjoying the
cool, soft air, and the delicious shade of those maple trees just below
Division Street. Her languid motions were the perfection of grace,
and she was the admiration of every pair of eyes on the street, when
suddenly she threw her parasol over the steeple of the church, screamed
till she rattled the windows in the parsonage, jumped up as high as the
fence three times, and whooped and shrieked, and wailed, and howled,
and kicked until everybody thought she had suddenly become insane. But
when they ran up and caught hold of her and poured water on her head
and $15 bonnet, and shook her until she quit screaming and began to
talk, they found that one of those green worms, about an inch long, had
dropped from the maple leaves and slid down her back. And they didn’t
wonder that she yelled and made a fuss about it.
* * * * *
SOME years ago a public-spirited citizen of Burlington died, and
left, by his will, $175,000 to found an orphan asylum; and his sons
and daughters, and nieces and nephews, and cousins, and brothers and
sisters, and all his wife’s relations, contested the will, and fought
and wrangled and called each other names, and told hard stories about
each other, and proved up wonderful claims, and hired lawyers by the
acre, and kept the fight up manfully until quite lately, when it
transpired that the man only had $35 in the whole wide world when he
died, and owed that to his grocer, and was in debt about $300 beside,
and that the coffin he was buried in hadn’t been paid for yet. And
it was sad to see those claimants standing around the streets with
gripsacks in their hands trying to get out of town, with a lawyer and a
capias lurking behind every corner.
* * * * *
A PAIR of deaf mutes were married in Monroe, Georgia, three years ago,
and now it is more fun than a circus to see them quarrel and make faces
at each other with their fingers.
* * * * *
IT IS a remarkable coincidence, and shows the beneficent watchcare
which a kind Providence exercises over mankind, that the advertisements
of new and infallible cholera mixtures should appear in the city papers
just about the time watermelons come in.
* * * * *
WHEN a man, coming down to breakfast half awake, with his uncertain
feet shod in a pair of slip-shod slippers, steps on a spool on the
first step, he is generally wide-awake enough by the time he tries to
break the last step to have a very vivid and not entirely incorrect
idea of the power and indestructible force generated by the Keely
motor. But that isn’t what he talks about when he goes into the
breakfast room and the folks ask him what made such a noise in the hall?
* * * * *
AT a charity ball in New York one lady wore diamonds valued at $85,000,
and another belle wore a $23,000 dress, and so all the way down to
the poor people, whose clothes didn’t cost more than $1,800. The net
proceeds of the ball, which were to be devoted to charitable purposes,
amounted to $11.25, which the door-keeper and ticket-seller spent for
hot drinks.
* * * * *
TWO young ladies of Tama County have finished a quilt containing 10,696
pieces, and the local paper proudly asks if anybody in Iowa can beat
that? We haven’t anything in Burlington like that in the quilt line,
but Caspar Cruger, up on Eighth Street, fell down the plank walk steps
leading down to Valley Street, one morning, and ran 10,697 pine slivers
into his back and legs, and a Tama man than he was when he got up you
never saw.
* * * * *
ANOTHER “wild boy” has made his startling and erratic appearance in
Texas, but since the fact has become generally known that the first
time a stranger takes a drink of Texas whisky he goes out on the
prairie and looks for a clean place to have a fit, public confidence in
Texas “wild boys” has been sadly shaken.
* * * * *
THE Massachusetts papers are discussing the question, “May Cousins
Marry?” We should hope so. We don’t see why a cousin hasn’t as good a
right to marry as a brother or an uncle or a son or sister. They all
get used to cousin’ after they marry, anyhow.
* * * * *
ABDEL MOULK KAHN, the eldest son of the Emir of Bokhara, has made a
pilgrimage to Mecca, in accordance with the Mohammedan custom. In this
country it is customary for the Moulk Kahns to Mecca pilgrimage to the
nearest river just before milking time.
* * * * *
A BURLINGTON man, who is a monomaniac on the subject of roller skates,
and who spent ninety-two days in the rink during the past season, and
got more falls than he has hairs on his head, and got himself stuck
so full of slivers that he wears through his clothes like a nutmeg
grater, calls himself a “hard rinker,” and consequently he is haunted
by traveling agents of temperance societies.
* * * * *
JOHN THOMPSON, of Muscatine, ran away from home with a circus three
years ago, and now he is posted on the bill boards of his native
town as “Giovanni Tiompeonatti, the Inimitable and Unapproachable
Grand Double Flying Trapeze and Philo Protean Prestiditateurean
Athleto-Acrobat.” Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
* * * * *
STEEL ropes are being introduced into the British navy in place of
the clumsy hemp hawsers. They had better enlist a few good government
contractors from America. They’ll steal ropes, swabs, tar buckets,
marlin-spikes, capstan bars, or anything else that isn’t nailed down
and under guard.
* * * * *
THE French know how to cook an egg three hundred and sixty-five
different ways, and yet, if it is a little bilious to begin with, the
strongest combination of all these ways won’t make a very eggy egg of
it.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.